Whole Language

Overview

Students with strong early literacy skills benefit from a literacy-rich approach. Whole language stresses the importance of students understanding language by reading meaningful texts and drawing connections to their own life experiences. Supplementing whole language instruction with phonics-focused lessons is important for these students to build their reading comprehension and overall reading success.

Use It in the Classroom

Research has found that students with strong early literacy skills, such as Vocabulary and Decoding, made greater gains in reading when engaged in meaning-making activities. For these students, teachers can introduce rich literature and a variety of genres to foster enthusiasm for reading. They can also help support continued growth in Decoding skills through what students are reading by having students draw phonic connections as they appear in the text.

Design It into Your Product

Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.

See how WriteReader applies whole language to help children learn to write when they are also learning to read. Through creating and writing their own books, learners develop their reading and writing skills concurrently, which enhances the meaningfulness of these processes.

Products can support whole language by providing diverse texts that are interesting and stimulating to learners. When products, like A2i, provide whole language and phonics instruction, learners continue to build their Decoding skills.

View References

Resources

Below are additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.

Common Myths

12 myths and misunderstandings about whole language with clarified explanations

Reading & Cognition

Subtopic that explores cognitive models of reading on Digital Promise's Research Map

Whole Language

ASCD Curriculum Update exploring the argument for and against whole language

Whole Language: An Integrated Approach

Manual for teaching reading and writing with a whole language focus