In our increasingly diverse schools, students bring diverse ways of speaking to the classroom. In turn, as features from students' home language varieties transfer into their readings of texts, teachers' assessment and intervention plans may be directly affected. If teachers conflate dialect influence with reading error in Standard English, they…

Despite the need to use and develop their English-language proficiency, English-language learners (ELLs) are often quiet during classroom discussions. The Response Protocol was developed to help teachers elicit and support the oral interactions of ELL students. The Response Protocol is a framework consisting of six types of responses that students…

Makes a case for maintaining experience charts which record children's language in dialect and in Standard English. (RB)

Presents a brief analysis of the arguments for teaching standard English and those for a bidialectal approach to beginning reading. (RB)

Describes a four-step language experience approach activity that is an effective aid in teaching Standard English language forms to dialect speakers while maintaining the integrity of the pupil's dialect. (FL)

Presents practical strategies for helping bilingual students understand idioms and figurative expressions in their second language. (MKM)

Reviews significant research into child Black English, describes some of the controversies raised by that research, and offers some implications for teaching suggested by the research. (FL)

Demonstrates briefly the naturalness of dialect variation in American English, examines the implications for reading instruction of recognizing the naturalness of dialects, and provides a list of references for the professional development of teachers of children who speak dialects other than standard English. (ET)

Analyzes the oral reading performance of four Navajo children and notes that they believed the purpose of reading was to produce acceptable English grammar. (MKM)

Argues that classroom teachers must take the responsibility of preparing students to live in a pluralistic society and must become aware of cultural and linguistic diversity in the country and the world. (FL)