Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 1, 1990 TAG: 9005010431
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Whole language means exactly that. We use all the language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening," said Pam Bousquet, who teaches second-graders at Falmouth Elementary in Stafford County. "It's really the up-and-coming thing. The children are becoming very literate and that's the whole purpose."
Joyce Wiencek, reading supervisor for the state Department of Education, said state educators have produced a seven-part television series to show teachers about the whole language method. About 4,500 teachers are studying the process, officials said.
"One of the most heavily debated topics is how does phonics fit into it," said Wiencek.
Advocates say the whole language approach does a better job of building youngsters' reading and comprehension levels than the traditional "See Spot Run" phonics method.
In phonics, children learn to read and pronounce words by memorizing and matching letters and sounds. Reading books with simple See Spot Run-style stories are used for practice.
Whole language supporters say kids find that kind of story boring.
"Before this year the majority of [reading textbooks] had specially written stories, really inane stuff kids couldn't care less about," said Paul Zisman, education professor at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg.
Students can handle the challenge of the more complex stories, said Janet Smith, a first-grade teacher at Lee Hill Elementary School in Spotsylvania County.
"My students are reading books you wouldn't expect first-graders to read," she said.
Her students also are beginning to develop higher-level thinking skills, Smith said. "They're not just reading, they're thinking about the details instead of just reading `run Spot, run,' " she said.
New reading textbooks were adopted last year in every Virginia school system, and state educators recommended books that favored whole language teaching.
"We took a more holistic, a more comprehension-based reading approach. And that started to bring change across the state," Wiencek said.
In his 1955 best-seller "Why Johnny Can't Read," author Rudolf Flesch, an ardent phonics supporter, called comprehension-based teaching "a method of animal training" and "the most inhuman, mean, stupid way of foisting something on a child's mind."
Wiencek disagreed, saying an effective whole language teacher will teach phonics as a subset of reading and not discard it completely.
by CNB