This article centers the stories of two eighth grade students in the context of a social action literacy project. Their teacher designed curriculum that scaffolded opportunities for them to address English language arts standards while speaking out for social change. The students' responses to the project reveal their civic literacy practices, as…

L. S. Vygotsky, the psychologist and teacher from Byelorussia who became a central figure in Soviet psychological and educational circles in the 1920s and 1930s, has become a frequent citation in 21st-century scholarship. He is most-often invoked to support some form of instructional scaffolding, based on his idea of the zone of proximal…

Describes ERIC resources that present research on children's language usage and development and that suggest activities for the promotion of language development. (ET)

In Language Arts program attention should be given to oral communication and listening skills as well as reading skills.

Describes how to analyze children's talk in three categories: factual reporting, interpretive reporting, and reasoning. (DD)

Defines oral language development, discusses findings from adult-child interaction studies, and presents classroom implications. (DD)

Discusses the positive effects of storytelling in the classroom and techniques for teaching children the art of storytelling. (HTH)

Reviews research on the importance of oral language for the child and provides a framework for curriculum design based on talk purposes, talk contexts, and talk planning. (DD)

Describes several techniques of informal assessment which might supplement test results. (DD)

Discusses five studies of early reading which suggest that oral language does not necessarily have to precede reading and that if both are learned at the same time they enrich the child's total language base. (DD)

Presents and discusses an Interactional Competency Checklist as an effective approach to the evaluation of children's oral language competence. (DD)

Comments on 114 studies in such areas as language, oral communication, written communication, pre-first grade programs, and beginning reading instruction. (DD)

To determine student readiness in any academic subject, teachers must determine individual levels of cognitive competencies children possess.