Children's Inquiry: Using Language to Make Sense of the World (Language and Literacy Series (Teachers College Pr))

This exploration of children's "inquiry" - what it is, how it develops, and how it contributes to children's learning - should help elementary and language teachers to understand, appreciate, and foster children's inquiry in classrooms. In this volume, the author introduces a theoretical framework for understanding children's "inquiry" language, not as linguistic forms (questions), but as communication acts in which the child brings another into the act of sense-making. By examining these "inquiry acts", the author aims to uncover new possibilities for the understanding of how children learn and how tachers can foster their learning in classrooms, class exercises, research findings, classroom episodes, and the author's own reflections.