ABSTRACT
Everyone interested in reading instruction knows about the great debates surrounding the teaching of beginning reading (Pressley, Allington, Wharton-McDonald, Block, & Morrow, 2001). In the middle part of the 20th Century, the debate was between those favoring systematic teaching of phonics and those advocating for the whole-word approach (Chall, 1967), which was most often operationalized with the then popular Dick-and-Jane-type readers. Students learned whole words by sight while proceeding through Dick-and-Jane lessons, only learning to analyze words into compo-nents after a substantial number of sight
words had been learned. As the 20th Century proceeded, the wholeword approach faded, falling victim to analyses such as Chall’s (1967) summary, which made the case that systematic phonics produced better reading achievement than whole-word methods. As whole word faded, another approach, whole language, rose to take its place. The major tenet of whole language is that literacy acquisition goes best when children are immersed in real reading and writing. The whole-language theorists felt there was no good produced by decontextualized skills lessons, with them especially emphatic that it made no sense for grade 1 to be filled with skill teaching and practice (e. g., Goodman, 1986). This latest version of the great debate, one that played out through the 1980s and into the 1990s was no less acerbic (e.g., Smith, 1994) than previous versions (e.g., Flesch, 1955).
