Shows teachers how to create intellectual environments that produce techinically competent students who are caring, secure, and activitely literate human beings
In the years since Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning was first published and quickly became a beloved bestseller, countless educators and their students have been impacted by this short, but powerful book. Throughout it, author Peter Johnston provides examples of seemingly ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a balance of research and classroom practice, Choice Words demonstrates how and what we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Now, in this second edition, Peter Johnston returns to the central message of the book—that teachers’ language is their most powerful tool for impacting children’s learning and creating classroom community. With updates throughout the chapters to both the research and classroom examples, and new chapters on social-emotional learning and mindsets, this book has much to offer to both those familiar with Choice Words and those who will read it for the first time. This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.
Introducing a spelling test to a student by saying, 'Let' s see how many words you know,' is different from saying, 'Let's see how many words you know already.' It is only one word, but the already suggests that any words the child knows are ahead of expectation and, most important, that there is nothing permanent about what is known and not known. Peter Johnston Grounded in research, Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Livesshows how words can shape students' learning, their sense of self, and their social, emotional and moral development. Make no mistake: words have the power to open minds – or close them. Following up his groundbreaking book, Choice Words, author Peter Johnston continues to demonstrate how the things teachers say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for the literate lives of students. In this new book, Johnston shows how the words teachers choose can affect the worlds students inhabit in the classroom. He explains how to engage children with more productive talk and how to create classrooms that support students' intellectual development, as well as their development as human beings.
In the new edition, Peter Johnston returns to the message that teachers' language is a powerful tool for improving children's learning and classroom community. This book has much to offer to both new and first edition readers with updated research, new classroom examples, and additional chapters.
In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach students math and reading skills; they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings. Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning shows how teachers can accomplish this by using their most powerful teaching tool: language.Throughout this book, author Peter Johnston provides examples of seemingly ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how and what we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Students learn how to become strategic thinkers, not merely learning the literacy strategies, but adapting them to their lives outside of the classroom.In addition, Johnston examines the complex learning that teachers produce in classrooms that is hard to name and thus is not recognized by tests, by policy-makers, by the general public, and often by teachers themselves, yet is vitally important. This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.
This book describes and documents an exciting new approach to educating literacy teachers. The authors show how to help teachers develop their own critical literacy, while also preparing them to accelerate the literacy learning of struggling readers. The text takes readers inside a literacy lab in a high-poverty urban elementary school, reveals the instructional approach in action, and provides many excellent examples of critically responsive teaching. Featuring a synthesis of several fields of theory and research, this book: illustrates teacher preparation and development as personal and social transformation - demonstrating that this process requires changing the ways teachers think about students, language, culture, literacy, learning, and themselves as educators; provides pedagogical tools - including the history of the innovative literacy lab, the context of the instructional interactions, and the transition from a university-based to a school-based project; and combines critical and accelerative literacy instruction, showing how teachers can accelerate the slowest developing readers in their classrooms and also build a sense of engagement for students with the social world.
This photocopiable resource provides a clear structure to assist teachers, SENCOs, learning support assistants and speech language therapists in developing children's language from the concrete to the abstract. It is based on fifty picture and verbal scenarios that can be used flexibly with a wide range of ages and abilities. Quick, practical and easy to use in the classroom, this programme can be used with individual children, in small groups or can form the basis of a literacy lesson or speech language therapy session. Features: question sheets are carefully structured to promote children's development of inference, verbal reasoning and thinking skills; the three parallel assessments of spoken and written language can be used to assess each child's starting level and then to monitor progress; score forms and worksheets for each lesson are included. The book is particularly useful for children who are recognised as having delayed language skills, specific language impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorder (including Asperger's Syndrome), pragmatic language impairment or moderate learning difficulties. The 2nd Edition is now in full colour throughout and has been updated with a simplified introduction. All illustrations and worksheets will now be available online. Features: full colour throughout; new and revised illustrations; simplified introduction; online resources; illustrations and worksheets.
Child Language: is a comprehensive introduction to child language, introducing students to the key theories of language acquisition and teaching them skills for analyzing children's language covers the core areas of language acquisition: phonological, semantic, syntactic, morphological and discourse development, the bilingual child and language development in exceptional circumstances draws on a range of real texts and data provides classic readings by the key names in the discipline: J. Becker, Roger Brown, R. Ely, Jean Berko-Gleason, J.N. Jorgenson, D. Messer, S. Pinker, and N. Smith.
World Languages Review aims to examine the sociolinguistic situation of the world: to describe the linguistic diversity that currently characterizes humanity, to evaluate trends towards linguistic uniformity, and to establish a set of guidelines or language planning measures that favour the weaker or more endangered linguistic communities, so that anyone engaged in language planning -government officials, institution leaders, researchers, and community members- can implement these measures.
Selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine, January 2010 Classroom talk, by which children make sense of what their peers and teachers mean, is the most important educational tool for guiding the development of understanding and for jointly constructing knowledge. So what practical steps can teachers take to develop effective classroom interaction? Bringing together leading international researchers and drawing on the pioneering work of Douglas Barnes, this book considers ways of improving classroom talk. Chapters cover: - classroom communication and managing social relations; - talk in science classrooms; - using critical conversations in studying literature; - exploratory talk and thinking skills; - talking to learn and learning to talk in the mathematics classroom; - the ′emerging pedagogy′ of the spoken word. With an accessible blend of theory, research and practice, the book will be a valuable resource for teachers, teacher-trainers, policy makers, researchers and students.