Emotional competence skills are important for children’s academic and social success. Throughout the preschool year, children experience great changes in their emotional competence skills, making it an ideal time to consider how adults support children’s development of emotional competence. Because children who are living in poverty are at-risk for not developing important emotional competence skills, it is of particular interest then to explore how adults, such as Head Start teachers, who work with children living in poverty, support children’s emotional competence. This study explores how Head Start teachers talk about emotions during whole-class book readings, a common preschool classroom activity, and how the amount of emotional content in text influences teachers’ talk about emotions during book readings. Findings from this study showed that Head Start teachers are not talking much about emotions during book readings, and that when teachers are reading books rich in emotion content, they talk more about emotions. This study also found that teachers’ scores on the emotional domain of the CLASS are not predicted by their use of emotion talk during whole-class book readings or their choice of text for book readings.
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