Describes one educator's whole-language approach to elementary school reading. Her class activities focus on books and friends during February to help celebrate Valentine's day. Two student pages offer friendship-oriented student activities. (SM)

Meant to be adapted by the K-4 classroom teacher to best meet the needs of students, this book describes Children's Own Stories, a program in which young children dictate their ideas and thoughts to adults, and develop a sense of community with their peers as they talk together, share their stories, collaborate on stories, and read and enjoy works…

"Decodable text" devotees say phonics is scientifically superior to the whole-language approach, which supposedly lacks research validation. However, 60 years of research supports holistic, literature-based approaches to literacy. Whole-language instruction is further validated by research on independent reading, cooperative learning, Reading…

This resource book contains a whole-language, extended thematic unit about the ways in which all people are the same. The book includes the following sections: (1) "Everybody Eats Food"; (2) "Everybody Wears Clothes"; (3) "Everybody Needs a Place to Live"; (4) "Everybody Communicates"; (5) "Everybody Uses Transportation"; (6) "Everybody Goes to…

This cooperative lesson for students of English as a Second Language (ESL) has students from different cultural and language backgrounds write folk tales from their native cultures and compile them into a book. Each four-member team is constructed based on student variables, including ethnicity, personality, academic ability, language functioning,…

This paper describes the experience of a fourth- and fifth-grade, first-year teacher's participation in the Book Club Project of the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects. The Book Club included the use of high-quality children's literature, opportunities for response to literature in multiple ways, and instruction that…