Describes Michigan's effort to create a state language arts curriculum in the context of systemic reform, discussing the overlapping of various stakeholders with the state and other collectives that emerged. Although Michigan's educational system remains loosely linked, democratic, and contentious, the language arts effort heightened mutual…

Provides 10 annotations to journal articles from the ERIC database that cover the topic of drama in the classroom. (MM)

Review New Zealand's language arts assessment practices at all grade levels. Suggests alternative approaches to student evaluation. (MM)

Suggests that this themed issue may help readers navigate some of the tricky currents that confront educators in an increasingly diverse population of learners. Introduces the articles in the themed issue. (RS)

Notes that educational software for the language arts should serve as a conduit to foster language development and should be evaluated as such for its instructional claims. Offers guidelines from a language learning perspective as a first cut in the evaluation process. (RS)

Reflects on literature and oracy. Addresses the diversity among current definitions of literature that influences children's access to books and the values they offer. Examines how different varieties of cultural orthodoxy since the seventeenth century have limited children's horizons. Suggests ways to provoke further discussion about the place of…

Discusses six professional resources and three classroom resources that can help practitioners decide what they should be doing and what they need to understand to function in a literature-based language arts classroom. (RS)

Discusses integrating technology education into the elementary language arts curriculum. Shows how elementary educators teach about technology as a process in problem solving and can apply it to such stories as "The Three Little Pigs." (JOW)

Suggests language arts instructors use film adaptations as well as novels to teach literature. (PRA)

Recommends helping reluctant readers learn to make videos as a strategy for helping them engage in language arts activities for authentic purposes. Discusses equipment needs, preproduction, storyboarding and script creation, production, and suggested topics for school videos. (SR)

Describes how the language arts and mathematics can be integrated as students write, solve, and discuss mathematics story problems. Offers suggestions for implementing a problem-writing program in mathematics, and provides four vignettes illustrating such mathematics instruction. (SR)

Describes Word Storm, an activity that juxtaposes the use of vocabulary words in context with the students' speculation about each word's functional application. (SR)

Presents responses of 16 prominent people in the field of reading/language arts to a question concerning what single most important thing the profession knows in the 1990s that it did not know in the 1960s. Notes common themes of the influence of writing, use of good literature, and integration of language arts. (RS)

Annotates 28 children's trade books which were selected by the Notable Children's Trade Books in the Language Arts Committee as the most outstanding trade books for enhancing language awareness among elementary school children for 1990. (MG)

Describes a framework, or process, for determining the value of a reading/language arts program--a model for program evaluation. (MG)