This is a language arts methods text that aims to enable elementary and middle school teachers to create classroom environments where all students can become lifelong readers and writers. Focusing on developmentally appropriate methods and materials, the book empowers teachers to integrate reading, writing, listening and speaking in K-8 classrooms. This edition offers a vision of how to transform theory and research into classroom practice that utilizes integrated language arts instruction, and it provides a developmental perspective with seperate chapters on teaching methods and materials for kindergarten, primary (1-3), intermediate (4-6), and middle grades (7-8). Instructional guidelines offer detailed suggestions for applying theory to practice, plus "For You to Try" and "For Your Journal", as well as providing classroom vignettes, and examples of students' oral and written language, illustrations and figures that accentuate interesting and informative theory, research, and practice. In addition this book offers expanded content on the impact of sociocultural theory and the whole language movement on the teaching of reading and writing across the curriculum; greater emphasis on cultural diversity, including multicultural children's literature booklists that complement the general children's literature bibliographies; and information on alternative assessment, emerging technologies, the multiage classroom, reader resopnse to literature, and thematic teaching.