What Works

The following annotation is taken from

Diegmueller, K. (1996, May/June).  The Best of Both Worlds.  Teacher Magazine, 7, (8), 20.

Annotation:  The subtitle:  “A combination of whole language and basic phonics instruction” may be the best way to teach beginning readers.  This statement concurs with much, if not all of recent research on the topic.  The goal of phonics based method and whole-language method is the same, to teach students to read.  The methods, however, are markedly different.  Phonics teaches students to ‘decode' within a systematic structured curriculum.  Whole language stresses the use of whole, uncontrived texts and encourages children to use language in ways that relate to their own lives and cultures.  In an effort to undermine one method for another, we have created, what is known in educational circles as, “the great reading war”.  A third approach may just be the key to end the battle.  A “balanced” approach to reading instruction combines the best elements of phonics instruction and whole language.  Children are explicitly taught the relationship between letters and sounds, but they are also reading interesting stories and writing their own.  Some strong and solid findings tend to favor a more balanced approach.  Studies indicate that children who acquire phonemic awareness, the understanding that sounds make up language, become more skilled readers than those who don't.  It must be repeated that phonemic awareness is different form phonics; and that teaching phonics without providing an understanding of phonemic awareness in inadequate.  To explain through example, “you can tell a child that the letter “f” makes the sound you hear at the beginning of the word “fish”, but to a child without phonemic awareness, there is no “beginning sound” in “fish”.  This child has not the understanding that a sentence is make up of these individual words, much unlike a long string of sound.

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