A sharing period in the first grade can provide children with many opportunities for developing both personally and educationally (e.g., becoming aware of others' attitudes and expressing themselves orally). Moreover, much can be learned by the teacher about students' interests, needs, and abilities when they are encouraged to "brainstorm" such…

This study investigated the relationship between the syntactical language development of first grade children and their socio-ethnic status. From a random selection of 160 first grade children, 19 Caucasians with highly developed language abilities were selected from a high socioeconomic stratum to be compared with 19 Negroes with low language…