ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the importance of language interactions for shaping children’s minds. Cognitive apprenticeship implies that children acquire cognitive and metacognitive processes through assisted instruction with a sensitive and knowledgeable adult. During literacy activities, teachers use language as a tool for communicating specific knowledge, skills, and strategies to children. The teacher is responsible for observing the child for signs of understanding and adjusting her language to ensure that the child will gain meaning from the interaction. Assisting a child in the zone of proximal development is called scaffolding. In modeling, the teacher demonstrates a literacy task, and the children observe the processes that are required to accomplish the task. The goal of coaching is to help the child understand a new concept, and understanding is derived from a meaningful and successful performance. Nonverbal scaffolds are resources that children use to help their performance on particular literacy tasks.
