Offering detailed, culturally diverse examples of practical applications in real classroom settings, this book provides preservice and inservice elementary school teachers with everything needed to set up workshop environments and procedures that develop children's talk, reading, writing skills, and critical thinking. The book features highly accessible, engaging, and comprehensive accounts of relevant theory, research, and the latest trends in language arts teaching. The child-centered, whole language, literature-based active workshop program presented in the book emphasizes that children learn language through active participation and by using language as a vehicle for discovery and communication. Chapters in the book are: (1) An Introduction to Teaching the Language Arts; (2) Building Powerful Language: Talking and Listening; (3) Storytelling; (4) Language Performed: Poetry and Dramatics; (5) Emergent Literacy; (6) Beginning Reading; (7) Developing Reading; (8) Teaching the Writing Process; (9) Writing Stories and Poems; (10) Nonfiction Writing; (11) Spelling and Word Study; (12) Authentic Assessment and Portfolios; and (13) Language Arts across the Curriculum. Appendixes present a metacomprehension strategy index, word lists organized by sound or letter, and origins of English words. (Contains 176 references.) (RS)