Children need sound language and literacy skills to communicate with others and actively participate in a classroom learning community. When an early childhood classroom offers a language- and literacy-rich environment, children have numerous opportunities to practice language and literacy in a social setting. A language-rich classroom includes an…

Examined developmental stability and change in children's private speech during the preschool years across-task constituency in children's self-speech, and across-setting relations between private speech in the laboratory and behavior at home and in the classroom. Clear associations were found between children's private speech use in the…

This bibliography is divided into three sections. The first section lists bibliographies relevant to first-language acquisition. In the second section, books pertaining to first-language acquisition and to language in the classroom situation are cited, while the third section lists two periodicals in the same areas. Entries include both American…

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)

Ninety-five children in 28 nursery school classrooms were used to investigate the relationships between teacher facilitative or directive verbal behavior in nursery school classrooms and seven aspects of child language change (receptive vocabulary, vocabulary of use, mean length of response, complexity of sentences, inquiry statements, dramatic…

A study used children's definitions to explore the culture of the classroom from the perspective of the child. Definitions for school-related terms were elicited from first graders in two classrooms of a public elementary school in the Chicago metropolitan area. After having been acclimated to the presence of the researchers, the students were…

Describes a teacher's metamorphosis from a controlling kindergarten teacher to one who recognized that children already have a great deal of language and print awareness and who could assist them in self-directed learning by giving their language instruction a context. (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)

Language research over the past two decades has revealed that language is not something children "acquire," but rather a system they build. A key factor in this linguistic construction is children's interaction with parents or other caregivers. The studies reveal further that children's repeated interactions with books and stories and…

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)

The papers in this collection focus on the integration of child language development research into curriculum and instruction, which was the general topic of four conferences held in conjunction with the 1979 and 1980 annual conventions of the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. Section one, on child…

This paper examines research findings about language development and their implications for classroom teaching. It first discusses early analyses of child grammar, which led to descriptions of the telegraphic nature of the speech of very young children and to the classification of child grammar into pivot and open classes. It then points out…

Intended for teachers in Tasminia, this book focuses on the school setting as a place that supports children as language users. The booklet suggests that when setting out to develop a language program teachers need a knowledge of the relationship between child development and language acquisition; an understanding of how the organization of the…

The whole language philosophy of teaching reading and writing is outlined and related to children's acquisition of oral and written language. A typical whole language classroom is described, along with the roles of the teacher and students. A chart contrasts whole language theory with more typical methods of literacy education. (Author/JDD)