Abstract

Based on an articulation between two different theoretical frameworks, one concerning formative assessment and the other the didactics of reading in French, the doctoral study presented here observes the closing lesson of a teaching sequence on the picture book L'indien de la Tour Eiffel. In the context of this session, our objective is to study the evaluative dialogues between the teacher and the class involving an integrated formative assessment, without temporal rupture, into the learning activities. In these dialogues, we are more specifically interested in the nature of the contributions (or intra- and intertextual initiatives) of 11-12 year-old students in French-speaking Switzerland. These initiatives aim at discovering the real killer of the above-mentioned detective story. Using a two-pronged analytical approach involving (1) observation of the evaluative dialogues in terms of the pattern that structures and enables them, and (2) descriptive analyses of the five tasks composing the lesson, we identify characteristics relating to the learners' contributions. Supported by specific teacher guidance (involving different types of questions), the students' initiatives show various functions (proposing interpretative hypotheses, commenting on the ideas of the teacher and classmates by explaining their disagreement, etc.) and demonstrate some operations of learning self-regulation. Moreover, these initiatives contribute to the form of reversed police inquiry taken by the lesson as well as to the teacher's decision to finish reading the text.