ABSTRACT
Whole-language instruction has gained a strong following among primary-grade teachers in today’s schools (Gursky, 1991). One feature making whole-language instruction attractive is that the reading and writing activities are meaningful and interesting not only to students but also to teachers. However, a weakness of this approach is the absence of systematic phonics instruction 1 during the first year of reading instruction. Some attention is paid to letter-sound relationships as students attempt to invent spellings during journal writing and as teachers read big books and stop to point out initial letters and sounds in salient words. However, care is not taken to ensure that each student masters the alphabetic system by learning all the letter shapes and names, learning which sounds they typically symbolize in words, learning how to segment words into sounds, and learning how to blend the sounds of letters to form words. Studies indicate that students who fall behind in learning to read do so because they have not acquired sufficient, working knowledge of the alphabetic system. Because this learning is difficult for them, they do not pick it up simply by being exposed to print (Juel, 1988; Juel, Gough, & Griffith, 1986; Stanovich, 1986; Wagner & Torgeson, 1987).
