ABSTRACT
The previous chapter explored the metacognitive awareness that the children in the study demonstrate as they reflect on their thinking, the task and the situation in which their discussions are taking place. This chapter forms a final analysis of the data considering how the children socially manage their discussion. This means looking closely at the social element of the dialogic readers’ engagement with each other, and considering how they manage the talking, thinking, reading and reflecting, together. The goals of the task that the children are engaged in can be seen to be twofold. At one level there is the explicit meaning-making scenario, to ask questions and find out what the text is ‘all about’. This goal is explicit and the rules are clear for the talk event, particularly because of the common understanding that the children have about this talk happening ‘in school’. 1
