Reports an interview with one teacher who shares her story about learning through language and authentic activities. Describes how she and her second-grade students develop a life history together in the classroom community. (MG)

Notes that those cross-cultural classroom exchanges that yield the most energy, intensity, and recognizable change are those centered upon students' simple needs, feelings, and fears. Uses such exchanges as the focus for wide-ranging questions about how best to modify language arts curricula and teaching to meet students' needs. (HTH)

Talks with students who share their thoughts and ideas about classroom environments which foster writing for learning. Discusses how teachers influence and affect students' writing environments. (MG)

Explores how issues of power and identity are embedded within the cultures of a first-grade writing classroom. Explores the ways in which children's instructional stances--their responses to the ways they are positioned as writers in the classroom--affect their literacy learning. Presents the theoretical and research contexts in which educator's…

Discusses how primary school students use language as a tool for learning mathematics and develop their language abilities at the same time. Shares how students use a research approach as they investigate mathematics and use language in their speaking, listening, reading, and writing. (MG)

Discusses the complex interplay between adults' and children's choices by introducing Henry James' fictional character, Maisie. Examines aspects of first graders' computer use, and considers how adult-determined purposes of the curriculum correspond with children's own worlds. Urges educators to make curriculum choices in collaboration with…