The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy of whole language instruction versus phonics instruction for improving reading fluency and spelling accuracy. The participants were the first grade students in the researcher's general education classroom of a non-Title I school. Stratified sampling was used to randomly divide…

A study investigated whether instruction in spelling would affect acquisition of the alphabetic strategy by beginning readers. Subjects, 28 beginning first- and second-graders of average or above-average intellectual ability in whole language classrooms, participated in small group training for two 20 minute periods a week for 6.5 months.…

Because of the increased influence of the whole language approach at the elementary and middle school levels and the increased emphasis on enriching instruction through reading across the curriculum, one alternative approach to teaching science which has received some attention from science and science education organizations is the use of…

School culture, as defined in this study, consists of norms, beliefs, and values that provide teachers with a sense of continuity against change generated by students, parents and reform movements. The first six norms of school culture, which appear to be interdependent and work together to create an effective school culture for change, are…

Through an in-depth interview, a study investigated teachers' beliefs and understandings about language learning. Subjects were nine elementary school teachers from a suburban midwest school district where a whole language philosophy was beginning to become infused in the curriculum. Subjects were selected for participation based on the teachers'…

A study examined the attitudes of educators toward content area reading in the early elementary grades. A self-report survey instrument called the Attitudes Toward Content Area Reading (ATCAR) was developed to measure educators' attitudes and to ascertain whether there were different theoretical orientations of educators relative to content area…

This study examined whether informal medical assessments could be used by classroom teachers to assess fine-motor ability and if there is any connection between fine-motor ability and reading achievement. Subjects were 174 half-day kindergarten children from whole-language classrooms in three states. Subjects were pretested in October and…

A study examined how the "Reading Classroom Explorer" (RCE, a hypermedia learning environment) might enhance the learning of preservice teacher education students as they prepare to assume internships. RCE is a searchable database of digitized video clips from the Center for the Study of Reading's video series "Exemplary Ways To Teach Reading."…

A study elaborated a profile of four northeastern Ohio middle-grade teachers who incorporated whole language instruction into their classrooms. The overarching question investigated was how middle grade teachers proceeded to configure whole language instruction in their classrooms. Teachers for the study were selected based on their use of and…

"Sharing the ownership of knowing" (a constructivist concept of motivation for literacy learning) is a dynamic classroom interaction in which a teacher's constructivist epistemological stance facilitates students' sense of their own construction of meaning and the integrity of their own thinking. Sharing the ownership of knowing was one…

A study compared the writing abilities of children in a whole language classroom with those of children involved in a skills-based classroom. Subjects, 37 African-American students in two heterogeneous first-grade classrooms in a low socio-economic area school in the inner-city of a large Alabama city, completed a reading/writing assessment (a…

A study investigated whether there was a relation between methods of language arts instruction and reading comprehension as measured by the Cloze-procedure. Subjects, 88 third-grade students in 4 classes (2 "traditional" and 2 "whole language") at 2 elementary schools in South Dakota, had their reading comprehension tested 6…

A study examined the reading approaches used by teachers and how accurately the teachers described the approaches to reading they purported to use. Subjects, 206 teachers in 19 elementary schools from 9 schools districts in a southeastern state, completed a questionnaire. Results indicated that (1) 68.75% of the teachers cited the basal as their…

A longitudinal study evaluated the Cambridge Lesley literacy Project as implemented in the Longfellow School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Five years of data on the progress of all children from kindergarten through third grade in both the Spanish bilingual program and the standard program were gathered during twice-weekly visits to the…

Going beyond the available research on children's spelling development and written text (reading), this year-long longitudinal study examined the relationship between spelling and reading in order to determine whether kindergarten children's ideas about spelling develop simultaneously with reading or whether one precedes the other. Monthly, for 8…