Early childhood educators are concerned with the most effective method of integrating whole language and phonics to maximize emergent literacy skills. In kindergarten, it is especially important to provide the students with a variety of institutional approaches to accommodate different learning styles. A study examined the effectiveness of Super…

There are continuing debates about the best approach to teaching reading--phonics or whole language. The most valuable link to learning to read is phonological or phonemic awareness, as soon as the alphabetic system is mastered. After phonemic awareness has been established, students enter the orthographic stage where they can process longer…

Suggests that John Dewey's 1938 text can take teachers into the 21st century and provides valid advice on teaching decisions including philosophy of education, learning, and schooling. Describes Dewey's five tenets of a framework that can provide language arts teachers with guidance for conceiving of student-centered, whole-language schooling and…

This response to Gersten and Dimino (EC 606 357) uses a case study to illustrate how a special education teacher integrated strategy instruction into a fifth-grade classroom where a whole-language approach to writing was already in place. Instruction in story grammar is presented as a seven-stage process. (DB)

Practitioners and researchers argue about how reading should be taught, about what students should read, and about how best to organize reading instruction in the classroom. Diverse methods are used to teach reading. These range from isolated skills-based (intensive phonics/basal reading programs) to integrated, whole language approaches that…

Three basic beliefs support teaching: (1) learning is social and individual; (2) learning must be personally meaningful; (3) learning rests upon a knowledge base that is constructed, not transmitted. The first step to creating an environment which supports learning in meaningful ways is for the teacher and students to become better inquirers into…

Despite suggestions for incorporating students' experiences into school math lessons, mathematics education seems to be the last bastion of formalism. This paper reports on a sociocultural study of the use of students' personal experiences in early childhood elementary mathematics lessons. This study documents the use of students' personal…