"Oedipus Rex" dramatizes a collision of past, present, and future. Once Oedipus recognizes the connection between the past and his horrific present, he stabs out his eyes, ashamed at what he has wrought and unwilling to look upon his future. The 21st-century English language arts classroom is in the midst of a collision as well. Coming into…

Demonstrates the interrelationship of the language arts--talking, listening, reading, and writing--as children explore and respond to the meaning in books. Notes that observing and listening in classrooms is a powerful tool for teachers seeking to assess children's learning. Shows how talking about books contributes to children's learning. (HTH)

Pupils need to study grammar that is useful and functional. How much stress should the language arts place upon pupils understanding the eight parts of speech in traditional grammar? Good teaching emphasizes proceeding from the concrete to the semi-concrete in teaching-learning situations, then the abstract phase of learning needs to be…

Because identification of effective instructional practices for building spelling skills remains a concern of those charged with guiding the development of student language arts competencies, this paper presents a synthesis of research and expert opinion on those practices that have been shown to foster spelling proficiency among both beginning…

This handbook is designed to identify classroom practices that research has shown to result in higher student achievement. The fundamental idea behind this book is that in order to succeed, efforts to improve instruction must foucs on the existing knowledge base about effective teaching and learning. The chapters are: (1) "Introduction" (Gordon…