‘Whole Language’ Is Changing Way Reading and Writing Are Taught : Education: Pendulum again swings away from phonics and related basic methods. New program seeks to develop word skills ‘in context.’
After a morning of reading and writing, it’s time for a play break in Ginny Bury’s 1st-grade classroom. How do the 6-year-olds spend their free time? Reading and writing.
Two boys curl over a dog-eared copy of Dr. Seuss, taking turns reading to each other. A noisy group crowds around an easel to read a giant copy of “Hairy Bear,” chanting the words in unison. Others find quieter corners to read alone or write in their journals.
“There was a time they’d never have selected reading or writing to do during playtime,” said Bury, who teaches at Waterford-Halfmoon Elementary School, 10 miles north of Albany. “But they have a love of it now.”
Bury is a recent convert to an educational philosophy that is changing the way reading and writing are taught in America’s schools. It’s called whole language, and the basic premise is this: that written language is best learned the same way spoken language is acquired--in context.
“The concept of whole language grows out of research that shows that kids learn language when it’s whole and it’s meaningful and relevant,” said Kenneth Goodman, professor of language and literacy education at the University of Arizona.
“What we’re doing is building written language much the way kids learn oral language, not breaking it up into bits and pieces,” said Goodman, whose research helped lay the foundation for the whole-language movement of the 1980s.
The whole-language approach is hard to define. It’s not a specific method of teaching, but a set of beliefs. It favors letting teachers and students choose what they read and write about; organizing teaching around “themes,” like monsters at Halloween, and evaluation by anecdotal records, or “kid-watching.” It is against teaching phonics and other skills according to a fixed sequence, grouping children by ability, basal readers (reading textbooks) and standardized achievement testing.
When Bury started teaching 1st grade 11 years ago, she taught the way most American teachers did in the back-to-basics movement of the 1970s. Children were given phonics drills, fill-in-the-blanks and circle-the-word workbooks and basal readers with text chosen more to instruct than inspire. Teachers conformed to lesson plans packaged by publishers.
But three years ago, Bury started observing the classrooms of some of her colleagues who had switched to a whole-language approach. She learned more at a teacher’s convention.
“I was really inspired,” she said. “It’s contagious. It’s a grass-roots movement, passed on from teacher to teacher. Once you see it in action, you can’t go back.”
That’s what makes whole-language different from other trends in education, said Goodman. “It’s coming from the bottom up. Teachers are bringing it into their schools, making their administrators and curriculum committees aware of it. That’s very different from any antecedent movement.
“I don’t know of anything where there’s been more change more rapidly,” said Goodman. “And it’s change that’s really affecting the classrooms.”
Some say it’s a change for the worse.
One of the most vocal critics of the whole-language movement is Jeanne S. Chall, an education professor and director of the Reading Laboratory at Harvard University. In her book, “Learning to Read: The Great Debate,” first published in 1967 and updated in 1983, Chall did an extensive review of educational research.
She concluded that the most effective way to teach beginning readers was to help them learn how to decode words through the systematic teaching of phonics. This code-emphasis approach, she said, is more effective than the meaning-emphasis approach of whole language.
Following the publication of Chall’s book in 1967, school administrators across the country adopted reading programs using a systematic phonics approach.
“Fourth-grade reading scores went up in the 1970s when there was more teaching of skills and phonics,” said Chall in an interview. “They began to go down in the 1980s when schools started switching to whole language.”
Chall said reading, unlike speaking, is not a natural development but a skill that must be taught step-by-step. Children should read fine literature and write stories, as they do in whole-language classrooms, but time must also be set aside for building a strong foundation in phonics.
Goodman rejects Chall’s conclusions, saying that other studies support the whole-language philosophy. “It comes down to a basic difference in what constitutes evidence and what constitutes appropriate research,” he said.
But what about the scores on reading tests, which are reported in the National Assessment of Educational Progress?
Whole-language proponents reject standardized tests, saying they don’t really reflect reading ability. They prefer to evaluate a student based on comprehension, writing skills and detailed observations by the teacher.
“Much of what we’ve done traditionally is teach kids how to take tests,” said Walt Sawyer, curriculum coordinator for the Waterford-Halfmoon school district. “We’re in love with numbers. But what does that score really quantify? Does it show a child loves to read and will be a lifelong reader? Does it show whether writing is a source of satisfaction?”
Standardized test scores at Waterford-Halfmoon have neither risen nor fallen since elementary teachers started switching to whole language a few years ago, said Sawyer.
“Critics will say whole-language teachers don’t teach phonics, grammar, spelling, usage, punctuation and other skills. That’s all wrong,” said Sawyer, who also teaches graduate courses in reading and writing education at Russell Sage College in Troy. “Whole-language teachers do teach skills; the difference is that they teach them in context, not in isolation.”
One of the problems with the whole-language movement, many educators say, is that it’s not well defined. Purists in the movement reject prescribed spelling lists, phonics worksheets, commercial reading texts and skills tests. But many teachers who espouse a whole-language philosophy say they also use some of those traditional classroom tools when they see a need.
The wide variations in how the whole language philosophy is being applied at schools across the country make it difficult to evaluate the movement’s effects, said Richard Allington, an education researcher and professor at the State University of New York at Albany.
“There are a lot of positive aspects to all the components of whole-language instruction,” said Allington. “But there are unresolved issues.”
For instance, he said, if schools don’t use packaged reading programs, how do they ensure that a 3rd-grader in one classroom is getting the same quality instruction as one in another classroom?
“A well-defined whole-language curriculum taught by interested and well-trained teachers should work,” said Allington. “The question is, how do we help teachers decide what we’re going to teach, to whom, and when? It requires a fair amount of expertise on the part of teachers.”
Allington, who is also a senior editor of the basal readers published by Scott, Foresman, said the major textbook companies have revised their reading programs to make them more attractive to whole-language teachers.
The state Education Department revised its syllabus two years ago to encourage “integrated language arts,” another name for whole language. And districts like Waterford-Halfmoon are designing their own whole language curricula.
California revised its curriculum in 1987 to recommend a greater focus on literature, said Allington, but it adopted a basal reader program to implement the plan. Texas and Florida also buy basal reader programs which are distributed statewide. New York and most other states allow districts to choose their own instructional programs.
Some aspects of whole language take some getting used to for parents. For instance, parents accustomed to seeing errors in spelling and punctuation circled with a red pen are sometimes alarmed to see such mistakes uncorrected on their children’s written work.
“I had a hard time getting used to it at first when my son brought home work with words misspelled,” said Kathleen Akin, who has a daughter in kindergarten and a son in 2d grade at Waterford-Halfmoon. “But the kids are thrilled that they can write and I can understand it. They’re writing books, even in kindergarten.”
Rather than demand dictionary perfection from the beginning, whole language teachers encourage budding writers to concentrate first on meaning. They say the use of “invented spelling” helps children develop an understanding of phonics. It also frees them to experiment with the language, said Sawyer.
“When you keep after kids on the little points, they tend to stop taking risks because they don’t want to make mistakes,” said Sawyer. “Their writing gets dull and boring, there’s less vivid language.”
The most significant aspect of the whole-language approach is the attitude it instills in students, said Susan Chura, who teaches 2nd grade in the Waterford-Halfmoon district.
“When I started teaching 16 years ago, you had classes divided into reading groups according to ability,” she said. “The kids were very aware of it.” Those pigeonholed as “slower” were subjected to heavier doses of skills drills; they ended up hating reading and school in general, Chura said.
“In whole-language classrooms kids are oblivious to who’s a champion reader,” she said. “Everyone’s a partner in learning.”
Children form and reform groups to work on projects based on shared interest. They critique each other’s work, offering praise and suggestions. They get a rich diet of literature selected according to their interests or tied into their science or social studies work, instead of the mass-produced program in a reading text and teacher’s manual.
The result, said Chura, is children who love learning.
“In the morning I can hardly edge my way up to the blackboard because kids are cornering me to show me what they’ve read or written the night before,” she added.
