Second language learners face countless obstacles in the classroom, including communication and comprehension limitations and difficulty building relationships with peers. Many teachers struggle to build an inclusive classroom environment and ensure all students, especially those with linguistic and other learning disadvantages, are learning. This…

This article describes collaboration between three university professors and six preschool teachers who used photo-narration and the Language Experience Approach to support the language development of young children. For more than a century, educators have used children's personal experiences as a basis for language and literacy instruction. The…

This article describes how anecdotal teaching can relate classroom material more effectively than lecture presentations. Personalizing the lesson engages students and increases retention.

A kindergarten teacher recounts her classroom experience introducing children to reading via the whole language approach, which is based on the belief that children learn to read and write naturally by listening, watching, speaking, and writing. Classroom photographs and samples of student work illustrate the article. (DB)

The book is both a guide to the language experience approach for teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) and a collection of one ESL student's personal narratives about his home country. The first section describes the language experience approach, which uses the student's own language and experience as the source of second language learning…

Increasingly, adult educators are using narrative and stories for many reasons, including their deep appeal, satisfaction, and cultural transcendence. As a fundamental structure of human meaning making narrative is a valuable classroom tool in that it can enable students to understand life events, personal actions, and solidify identity formation.…