Language Arts - Volume 86, Issue 4, 2009

In elementary school classrooms, mathematics is rarely perceived as a form of communication or as a foundation for community. Instead, it often takes the shape of numbered problems with very specific answers compiled into textbooks and worksheets.

This article explores how a group of ten fourth-grade students who were avid readers became a community of inquiry. Because the children’s reading experiences mattered to them, they were intrigued by documenting how they created, entered, and sustained the world of the story, and this fostered a spirit of inquiry.

In this article, we address the ways children collaborate to inquire about text in the context of group discussions, addressing the question: How do students stay on-topic and sustain their discussions of text? We speculate that a framework for dialogic discourse, referred to as exploratory talk, allows students to understand that discussions of text are about collaborating, thinking together, asking questions, and reasoning about the text or a topic related to the text.

The Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group presents a series of lessons over their 20 year history about policy issues in the areas of Access, Entry toClassrooms, Data Collection, Publication, and Data Ownership.

Gordon Wells discusses, through examples from his own research, how the relationship between individual and society can only be properly understood if we recognize the key role of communities and their members as mediators of this relationship, largely through the use of language.

Early twentieth-century social activist Jane Addams is best known for her work at Hull House, the settlement house she founded with Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. Addams was also a pacifist, storyteller, writer, and philosopher. Through her actions, stories, and writing, Addams modeled a philosophy of democracy-in-action based in imagination and sympathetic understanding.

Although, as teachers, we are surrounded by others throughout the day, teaching can paradoxically feel like a solitary endeavor, as it can be hard to find the time to connect to other educators. Given the balancing act teachers have to accomplish each day, it can be easy to forget the positive effects of belonging to a professional community, let alone to know how to begin to construct one’s own.

Every year the Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts committee reads and reviews hundreds of books to select 30 titles that language arts teachers will enjoy sharing with and recommending to their students. Notable books may deal explicitly with language, such as plays on words, word origins, or the history of language, or they may demonstrate uniqueness in the use of language or in style.

The author uses satire to illustrate the kinds of patterns and tensions that can arise in communities of inquiry. This parody will not only make the reader laugh but also offer a model against which to build more thoughtful and inclusive communities in which to reflect and grow.