This book brings the vision of a student-centred classroom to life through clear illustrations of guiding principles, balanced with examples of real teachers in real classrooms with real children, many of whom are English learners.

Engaging, readable, student-friendly, and practical, this text is built on a strong theoretical and research base, and illustrated and clarified with real-life examples of children and teachers from today’s diverse classrooms. Written to reflect cutting-edge theory, new research, the latest policies, the new Common Core State Standards, and best practices in the rapidly changing world of language arts instruction, Carole Cox’s new Seventh Edition continues to guide students as they learn the many skills required to become an effective teacher today.

The book’s unique Snapshot feature takes readers into the real world of the classroom as they read about actual students and see samples of their work, and hear from the teachers as they describe their philosophies and methods. Well-regarded for its authoritative, comprehensive coverage of the contemporary language arts classroom, the book provides a balance of student-centred and teacher-directed instruction that includes many examples from today’s classrooms. This new edition remains grounded in current theories of constructivism and social interaction combined with a reader-response perspective toward teaching with children’s literature, as well as current research in language and literacy instruction.