This article discusses whole language and phonics approaches to teaching L1 reading. It argues to bring these two perspectives together under an integrated approach to better teach second language reading. The article offers an integrated lesson plan with adaptable activities and techniques that show how to apply the integrated approach.

Presents definitions of "whole language" and classroom organization/management. Describes several plans for organizing and managing a whole-language classroom. Presents a detailed example demonstrating how to organize and manage a whole-language primary classroom using a "modified blocked" approach. (SR)

A primary-grade teacher describes how she uses singing to teach phonics in her classroom. Notes how children are helped to integrate the three cuing systems of language--semantic, syntactic, and graphophonemic--as they read and sing together. (ET)

Discusses development and implementation of an approach to decoding in which students use words they know to decode those they do not know. Discusses how an analogy approach was implemented in a tutorial setting. Offers guidelines for how the approach can be used in regular classrooms, including whole language classrooms. (RS)

Maintains that viewing should be incorporated as an integral element in whole language curricula. Suggests a number of activities for the secondary school language arts classroom, pertaining to specific tenets of the whole language approach. (TB)

Describes the Modified Guided Silent Reading Procedure (MGSR), which provides an instructional framework for teaching complex literacy and learning strategies to fluent readers of about nine years of age and above. Notes that the MGSR is student centered and consistent with beliefs about language and learning that underpin programs aligned to a…

Relates a teacher's observations of first graders in a whole language classroom enabling each other to read. Suggests reading techniques which foster this collaborative learning. (PRA)

Describes a weekly meeting of a collaborative elementary school teacher support group in Ohio. Triangular conferencing, which involves parent-teacher-student and is student-led, is the subject of the meeting. Also describes visits to elementary classrooms where new ways to teach reading and writing are implemented with input from Regie Routman,…

Offers responses from four readers of this journal, all reading and/or classroom teachers, to a question posed by another teacher: whether children who have had limited literacy experiences should start reading in whole-language readers and/or trade books or whether they should start in controlled-vocabulary preprimers. (SR)

Describes Readers Theatre, a presentation of prose or poetry that is expressively and emotionally read aloud by several readers. Describes how students work collaboratively to adapt their favorite books, poems, or stories to a Readers Theatre script. (RS)

Describes changes made in the teaching of a college preservice education course in children's literature and reading methods that reflect principles of the whole-language approach. Discusses integration of curriculum, social context, classroom environment, evaluation, writing, purposeful learning, and opportunities to choose. (SR)

Describes the experience of a college teacher teaching, for the first time, an introduction to literature course with a whole-language approach. Describes how she abandoned her position as imparter-of-knowledge and as authority, and joined the students as one of many readers and writers. Discusses how class activities were structured and notes…

Describes a writing program in a first-grade classroom in a primarily low-socioeconomic, urban Appalachian region. Notes that the program aims at helping children become writers and to: (1) teach the concept of writing as communication; (2) learn about children's strengths and needs through observations and writing samples and teach accordingly;…

Discusses Guam's unique multicultural student and teacher population. Describes two classroom language arts activities (the method of taped repeated reading and "write around") that have met with success and continue to gain momentum in Guam's classrooms. (RS)

Describes LETTERLAND, a unique teaching model that blends a structured phonics approach with whole-language teaching and is widely used in British classrooms as an initial approach to literacy as well as in special needs contexts. (HTH)