Discusses research with children with learning problems to discover, through their narratives, in what ways they were disabled and what ways they were competent with language and to test the narrative mind theory to see if their stories could be interpretive metaphors for their lives. (HTH)

Touches on the cognitive and self-discovery processes and imagination and creativity children experience before their verbal skills are fully developed. (HTH)

Illustrates how children constantly solve communication puzzles in the course of language acquisition and offers suggestions for teachers and parents to assist children in their understanding of language. (HTH)

Records the attempts of a very young child to construct his own understanding of what it means to die and of the social impact of death within his own culture. Includes transcripts in which the child uses narrative to frame his first, tentative ideas about death and responds to literature to further extend his understanding. (JD)

Explores a five-year-old's writing about his liking for spiders to learn about the relationship between children's investigations of the world as information (content) and their use of language to do so. Discusses implications for teachers of children's ability to deal with concepts and vocabulary associated with content materials. (HTH)

Presents conversations of a group of fifth graders collaborating on a social studies task to illustrate how childen use language to learn. Focuses on one student whose oral language was rapid and chaotic but who demonstrated extremely sophisticated and complex structuring of knowledge to understand a particular social studies concept. (HTH)

Presents case studies of two first-grade children, examining their writing as a linguistic and social process that involves the child in an exploration of both oral and written language within the social context of the classroom. (HTH)