This article describes a project that studied 15 preservice teachers' perceptions of and reactions to responding to children's and young adult literature using a Ning blog. These perceptions and reactions provided insight into various practical aspects of using a social networking blog to facilitate literature response in a teacher education…

Explores materials in the ERIC system dealing with the turn-taking model of classroom interaction between teacher and students. (HTH)

Interviews Therese Craig, a drama educator at the University of Alberta, Canada, who discusses the nature and rationale of journal writing, as well as applications for its use in the classroom. (HTH)

Describes how one sixth-grade writing instructor successfully introduced writing conferences into the classroom. Discusses some of the problems encountered, how they were resolved, and the final procedures used for peer and teacher conferences. (HTH)

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 a teacher inservice project intended to develop a language policy for using writing as a learning tool. Argues that the inservice context for teachers as learners is similar to that of the classroom and that the opportunity for talking should likewise be used for learning in the classroom. (HTH)

Focuses on student-teacher interaction in one classroom. Discusses different methods for conducting informal classroom research, connecting classroom practices with current theories, and analyzing and interpreting classroom events to improve instruction and learning. (HTH)

Knowledgeable teachers, enhanced environments, appropriate programs and materials, appropriate technology, adequate assessment, and sophisticated notions of individualization are suggested as factors that will provide a "least restrictive" environment for mainstreamed nonverbal handicapped children, as required by the Education for Handicapped…

Shows how the classroom environment provided by a second- grade teacher allowed one of her students to experience her own writing process and develop as a writer. (RL)

Suggests adapting teacher-written responses on children's compositions to their individual differences as an effective way to promote educational progress. Written comments can take the form of reaction to the child's ideas, encouragement, correction, or evaluation/instruction. (AEA)

Considers the impact of teacher responses to student writing. Notes the need for a greater identification by the teacher of the overall work that students present for evaluation and feedback. Offers guidelines for responding in more qualitative ways to student writing. (RL)

In this paper, the author looks at how she attempted to teach her students--preservice teachers--to engage in dialogic conversation about gay and lesbian identity using children's literature with gay and lesbian characters as a jumping off point. Through her analysis, the author has identified two requirements for dialogic conversation among…

Narrated by a "researcher"-teacher, drawing from an interactional ethnographic and sociolinguistics perspective, he re-examines his previous teaching practices as a teacher-researcher in order to build a conceptual model for communities-based learning. This article reveals the discursive ways that linguistically and culturally diverse…

Discusses the literacy of teacher Ruth Madden and its relation to her unique approach to language arts teaching in the primary grades. (HTH)

The way in which the culture of ethnography has been developed in classrooms that encourages teachers and students to question, doubt, reflect, revise and remain open to new possibilities, is discussed. Through the documentation of interactions and talks between teachers and students, a critical examination of the teachers and capabilities and…