Focuses on the teaching behavior of a small sample of rural self-described whole-language kindergarten teachers to determine consistency level between their perceptions of whole-language teaching and whether whole-language concepts were applied to their classroom instruction. Indicates many teachers were unable or unwilling to incorporate many of…

Compares results of a modified whole language approach (incorporating daily 15-minute total class phonics instruction) with those obtained from a popular basal approach. Finds that students in the whole language classes made greater gains in phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and total reading achievement than students in the basal…