The objective of this research was to discover the effect of teaching methods and learning styles on the student's ability to write essays. This study was conducted in elementary school in East Jakarta. The population of this studies was 3rd-grade elementary school students who study in East Jakarta. Samples were taken with stratified cluster…

In teaching reading, educators strive to find the balance between a code-emphasis approach and a meaning-oriented literacy approach. However, little is known about how different approaches to literacy can benefit bilingual children's early reading acquisition. To investigate the novel hypothesis that children's age of first bilingual exposure can…

Data from two different sites were used to examine how exposure to a highly academic curriculum is related to growth in beginning literacy and early reading skills from kindergarten through the end of third grade. In one site students in one school used the Direct Instruction (DI) program, "Reading Mastery (RM)", from kindergarten…

A study investigated the attitudes toward reading of third-grade students involved in a whole language program. The sample consisted of 71 students--48 students participated in the study group, and a control group consisted of 23 students. The independent variables were participation status, gender, socioeconomic status, race, qualification for…

A study was conducted to determine ways in which student learning styles could be accommodated in a whole language classroom. The Reading Style Inventory (RSI) developed by Marie Carbo which follows the Dunn model of learning styles was chosen for the study. The RSI was administered to 10 students in 2 second/third combination grade whole language…

A study explored 18 Georgia third graders' perceptions of literacy teaching and learning during the second year of their teacher's transition from a traditional, textbook-based approach to a whole language, literature-based approach. Data gathering included 8 months of observation and of in-depth interviews with students. Analysis revealed that…

Whether explicit-strategy instruction combined with whole-language instruction would improve third graders' spelling more than using either approach alone was studied with 37 students. Findings suggest that young children learn to spell best when they are taught a repertoire of effective strategies in a meaningful context. (SLD)

This article describes how a teacher at the Manitoba School for the Deaf applied Kaplan's Curriculum Differentiation Model for gifted and talented students to develop a thematic unit ("Patterns") for a grade 3 whole language classroom. (Author/DB)

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 qualitative study examined what is taught in a whole language classroom, how it is taught, and what changes in curriculum and instruction occur and why. A third-grade teacher, who had taught for 5 years and was considered an exemplary teacher by her principal and colleagues, was interviewed. Nineteen children in the teacher's heterogeneous…

To gain appreciation for each others' perspectives, a Mississippi language arts consultant and a third-grade teacher from Iowa traded jobs for a year. As a consultant, the teacher found that classroom teachers were more interested in whole-language instruction practicalities than in theory. As a teacher, the consultant learned that classroom…

Considers different responses of two third-grade bilingual students to an English whole-language literacy curriculum. Examines how the students resisted, appropriated, and/or internalized a whole-language curriculum. Discusses the relationship between student curricular interactions and their literacy development. (SC)

A study investigated whether students in whole language based and basal reader approaches would have different concepts of reading when asked to define reading. Subjects, 69 suburban New Jersey first and third graders and 16 New Zealand first graders, were asked 3 questions: "What is reading?"; "What do you do when you read?";…

A study determined the effect of shared writing activities on reading comprehension. The subjects, 40 second- and third-grade students from a suburban school in Mercer County, West Virginia, completed the Reading Comprehension Subtest of the Comprehension Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) for grade 2 as a pretest. A control group of 20 students were…

A study examined whether the integration of whole language with the basal reader would increase the use of language and comprehension of literature. Twenty students and one teacher in a split third/fourth grade classroom in a predominantly white, lower socioeconomic school in Ottumwa, Iowa, participated in the study. For 16 weeks, students wrote…