To help teachers stay abreast of changes in language usage, this update presents 100 alphabetically arranged short answers to questions often asked by teachers, parents, and students. The guide takes a "style" approach to usage, providing answers that draw attention to the language choices and flexibilities available in particular situations. For…

Figurative language enlivens a text, providing visuals in the minds of readers. This lesson will have students listening to and reading selected texts as they seek out their favorite literary devices. During the five to seven 50-minute sessions, grade three through five students will: acquire a clear understanding of the concept of figurative…

"Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." tells of King's childhood determination to use "big words" through biographical information and quotations. In this lesson, students in grades 3 to 5 explore information on Dr. King to think about his "big" words, then they write about their own…

Notes that contemporary poets are writing sensitive and imaginative poetry that offers children insights into life and fun. (FL)

Designed to assess a reader's comprehension of items differing in contrastive vocal stress, this test consists of 64 items divided evenly between eight sentence types: declarative active, declarative passive, interrogative, and imperative, with each in a positive and negative form. The element of contrastive stress is placed on nouns functioning…

Argues that teaching for poetic thought develops not only poets and lovers of poetry, but also readers, dreamers, and doers. Offers suggestions on how it is done.(FL)

No language is as varied in history as American English and no language is as rich in word choices. Additions to our language from other cultures are discussed. Four categories of activities involving words are presented. (MT)

Argues that choral reading of poetry can help children develop fluency in reading and offers some techniques and some poems for use in choral reading. (FL)

Provides several typical negative sentence structures, discusses why children find them difficult, and suggests how to begin teaching them to handle negatives. (FL)

Every day in so many ways, children are surrounded by language: from the language of home and family, to the never-ending bombardment of environmental print, to the clash between school admonitions to use "standard" English and their peer groups' specialized and invented speech. According to the author of this book, students love to…

Describes a program for introducing nonstandard speakers to standard English syntactic patterns that involves three steps: (1) introducing the new pattern, (2) providing practice, and (3) manipulating the new pattern. (JL)

Explains how haiku was used in fourth and fifth grade classes to help the children acquire needed discipline in their use of language. (RL)

Exercises integrating mathematical concepts and reading are explained.

Describes how a teacher with little background in science helped her students write puppet plays as part of their learning about the science of rainbows. (FL)

Discusses how wordless picture books can be used as instructional aids to teach linguistically/culturally different students. Gives suggestions on how certain of these books can be used to examine differences between cultures. (FL)