Researchers argue that systematic reading instructions is required to develop students reading comprehension even after they have learned to master the elementary skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate how four Swedish teachers in fourth grade work with text talks to improve their students understanding of texts. The study answers following questions:

- How do the teachers describe their work with teacher-led text talks to improve their students’ understanding of texts?

- How does these teachers verbal scaffolding take place during the text talks?

The questions are answered by two qualitative methods, both interviews and classroom observations. The interviews focus on how the teachers describe their work with text talks while the observations show how the teachers verbal scaffolding takes place during the text talks. The theoretical framework is based on Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective that assumes that learning is a social and communicative process. The result of the study shows that all the teachers felt that the text talks had a good impact on their students' reading comprehension. The students learn from each other’s strategies, prior knowledge and paths of thinking when talking about different texts. The teachers describe that their role is to maintain the dialogue between the students but also to support them to become active readers. The result also showed that the teachers used various types of verbal scaffolding to support their students though the processes of understanding a text.