Describes activities that use a literature- and activity-based approach to teach phonetic skills effectively without using phonics workbooks and worksheets. Activities relate to special letter days during which new letters are featured, games, literature and poetry, music and nursery rhymes, art, writing, and math. (SM)

This book, which uses nursery rhymes as its literature base, represents a non-threatening approach to beginning reading for children in kindergarten through grade 3. The book uses a variety of cross-curricular activities which are built around four familiar nursery rhymes. The book's introduction describes how each rhyme may be used over a 5-day…

Experienced whole language teachers have developed a number of practical strategies that can and should be used to facilitate the development of "graphophonic knowledge" in their students' literacy learning. Graphophonic knowledge is defined as the combination of the sound system (phonology), the graphic system (orthography), and how…

A practicum provided child-centered activities for 20 kindergarten children during regular school hours. Goals for the practicum were to: (1) develop literacy; (2) increase social interaction between the teacher and the child through verbal and body language communication which weaves reading and writing into the relationship; and (3) obtain a…

Nursery rhymes and written phonics used in a meaningful context are valuable teaching methods which can be applied in a whole language classroom or in conjunction with a basal reading program. Because nursery rhymes are rooted in oral tradition they lend themselves to oral presentation. They provide forms for the oral beginnings of the best of…

This book offers pre-school teachers, kindergarten teachers, daycare workers, and parents ways to help young children begin to read and write, by placing stories at the very center of the early childhood curriculum. The book includes an in-depth discussion of the crucial pedagogical and developmental roles that stories can play in early childhood…

The purpose of this booklet is to disseminate theoretical ideas and practical strategies concerning whole language so that learning for children and practice for teaching may be enlightened and improved. Chapters include: "Whole Language Learning" (William McCarthy and Alicia Sutton); "Planning the Program and Organizing the Classroom" (Marilyn…

Presents two kindergarten teachers' accounts of the use of the whole language approach to children's learning in class. Describes the reading of a children's book to a public kindergarten class and the subsequent literacy-related activities. (BB)