Communicative skills develop when there's something meaningful for children to communicate about-when they are taking an active role.

Curriculum should help children make deeper and fuller understanding of their own experience

In both cooperative learning and project work, the teacher encourages children to talk to one another. This helps them pay attention to each other's efforts and ideas. Children take to these kinds of exchanges very readily, but the teacher really needs to encourage this interaction.

Learning to deal with setbacks, and maintaining the persistence and optimism necessary for childhood's long road to mastery are the real foundations of lasting self-esteem.

Of course children benefit from positive feedback. But praise and rewards are not the only methods of reinforcement. More emphasisshould be place on appreciation--reinforcement related explicitly and directly to the content of the child's interest and efforts.

Children involved in project work are encouraged to serve the group needs and share responsibility for what's accomplished.

Young children are unlikely to have their self-esteem strengthened from excessive praise or flattery. On the contrary, it may raise some doubts in children; many children can see through flattery and may even dismiss an adult who heaps on praise as a poor source of support-one who is not very believable.