Examines and discusses ways in which the presentation mode can affect children's talk when they are engaging in dramatic dialog. Gives special attention to those differences in language that occur across varying contexts of situation in drama. (HTH)

Teachers should enrich students' language environment, give children opportunities to practice their language, and allow feedback on language to occur. (DD)

Discusses recent research highlighting both the child's growth as a reflective language user and the school's capacity to enhance or hamper that growth. The research is concerned with the need for children eventually to use language in decontextualized ways, without the supporting context of visible or manipulable objects or actions. (HTH)

Describes how kindergarten children use invented spelling to rewrite Mother Goose nursery rhymes, indicating the phoneme grapheme system the children perceived from spoken language. (HTH)

Discusses how the concept of "scaffolding," adult support of children's attempts to achieve an intended language outcome, has been somewhat misused in the schools, resulting in the support of the teacher's intentions rather than those of the child. (HTH)

Describes a three-month study of literacy development in the home and in nursery school. Discusses the results, which indicated that children engage in literacy events far more at home than at school, and offers classroom suggestions for narrowing this discrepency. (HTH)

Describes the interrelationship of reading and writing and proposes a full-school program for reading and writing development that builds on the full range of personal use of written language. (JL)

Reviews research on the value of innovative and traditional methods of teaching language and encourages teachers to provide classroom opportunities for students to communicate and to teach language skills. (DD)

Examines children's acquisition of language meaning through their use of homophony, riddles, and other word play. Discusses ways to encourage the study of meaning, using classroom techniques such as finding metaphorical relations among words and phrases, learning word origins, or studying naming strategies of other cultures. (HTH)

Examines materials in the ERIC system related to children's early oral language and the transition from home language to the more formal language used in school. Offers activities for a classroom climate that is responsive to children's oral language development needs. (HTH)

Examines notions and examples of instruction that can inhibit language growth, arguing that reading and writing curricula can be designed so that children are provided the freedom to explore language and grow as language learners in much the same way they learned oral language. (HTH)

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

Presents observations on the effects of a word processing program developed for first-grade students. Focuses on the composing and transcribing abilities of six students, representing the range of abilities in the class. (HTH)

Suggests that teachers examine the assets of natural language in children's homes for implications for language instruction at school. Discusses a children's story that can be interpreted as an analogy with instructional implications for creating natural language contexts in the classroom. (HTH)

Discusses the collaboration that developed among two classroom teachers and a university instructor while one of the teachers visited classrooms to investigate the question: How can classroom teachers promote children's language and language skills? (HTH)