This facilitator's guide is designed to assist professional learning communities (PLCs) in applying evidence-based strategies to help K-8 English learners acquire the language and literacy skills needed to succeed academically. Through this collaborative learning experience, educators will expand their knowledge base as they read, discuss, share,…

These handouts, which are meant to accompany the facilitator's guide, are designed to assist professional learning communities (PLCs) in applying evidence-based strategies to help K-8 English learners acquire the language and literacy skills needed to succeed academically. The facilitator's guide uses a five-step process for collaborative…

Purpose: This final article covering the topic of the interplay between decoding, comprehension, and content versus structure knowledge describes a set of language initiatives that are focused toward content area learning. Inspired by the work of their colleagues from diverse fields and their own work, the authors offer suggestions to clinicians…

The author explores elements of copying written work in sequential order; and offers specific techniques for developing copying skills, particularly in primary grade students experiencing copying problems. (SW)

The article examines two topics important to educators working with learning disabled college writers: error patterns of college learning disabled, normal, and basic writers across different tasks and instructional approaches successful in improvng the written language skills of college learning disabled writers, such as sentence combining and…

Procedures useful in teaching translation are presented, including the following: silent reading, focused rereading, identifying vocabulary, dictionary work, oral translation, written translation, rereading the translation. (three references) (LB)

The authors describe a developmental approach for teaching expressive writing skills to learning disabled adolescents. General guidelines for remediation are outlined, and activities useful in a developmental writing approach are listed. (SW)

Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest explores researchers' current understanding of English spelling and its acquisition as the basis for spelling instruction methods other than memorization. After defining spelling and the relationship between spoken English and its written system, the digest explores how…

Describes the use of oral traditional stories to teach sentence cohesion to students of English as a Foreign Language. Oral stories, when written, resemble the pupils' own work. By turning the former into a cohesive narrative, students can improve on their own stories. Temporal cohesion of the stories facilitates this practice. (PJM)

Explores the English language spelling system and the differences between written and spoken language. Points out that, although young children have a complex understanding of language, four-to-six-year-olds do not have the linguistic competence of adults. Explains how teachers can help in areas of difficulty. (JM)

Students need teacher guidance to have ample practice in understanding and using the concept of intonation and its inherent parts: (1) stress (placing emphasis); (2) pitch (higher or lower sound); and (3) juncture (pauses). To communicate effectively, students need to utilize stress, pitch, and juncture appropriately in oral and written discourse.…

Suggests that for improving syntactic fluency and the overall quality of compositions, exercises should be based on generative rhetoric. These exercises in which students supply the content of the sentence from a list of suggested structures are superior to sentence-combining exercises that provide the student with all the information. (PMJ)

Discusses a paragraph-centered approach to the teaching of reading in a foreign language. (CFM)

Describes a classroom activity that emphasizes syntactic fluency and the richness of linguistic resources available in written language, while downplaying the "dos and don'ts" of traditional punctuation instruction. (RL)

Discusses the need for systematic exploration of claims about the advantages of language experience dictations; recommends that teachers guide the rereading and editing of early dictations to facilitate comprehending behaviors, and that they help children explore writing conventions as their dictations indicate a readiness to learn them. (ET)