Which Builds Stronger Language Arts Skills--Workbooks or Direct Instruction? Will Teachers Spend Their Time Dispensing Consumable Worksheets or Imparting Skills through Direct Instruction? The Continuing Debate Asks Just How Explicit Phonics, Correct Spelling, and Quality Literature or Composition-Based Programs Fit into the Time Frame Teachers Are Given to Solve the Literacy Problem.

The Riggs Institute, 4185 SW 102nd Ave., Beaverton, OR 97005. Tel: 503-646-9459; Fax: 503-644-5191; e-mail: riggs@riggsinst.org. For full text: http://www.riggsinst.org/language.htm.

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Basal Reading; Beginning Reading; Language Arts; Phonics; Primary Education; Skill Development; Whole Language Approach

This paper aims to offer a "fresh look" and to provide some further insights on teaching basic language skills with literature and composition-based "whole" language arts programs (this could include the Core Knowledge Foundation's literature), and on the time and attention this combination deserves in primary-level classrooms. According to experts, beginning students have spoken vocabularies ranging from 4,000 to 24,000 words, so that basal/workbook programs which teach about 175 mostly sight-memorized words in Grade 1 and use them, with necessary repetition, in "Dick and Jane"-type "literature" do not capture the attention of students. Dismissing the potential advantages the whole language movement offers is to ignore the opening reading reformers and explicit phonics and direct instructional advocates have been seeking for the past 70 years. Skills must be taught through direct instruction or work sheets, and direct instructional time permits the use of multi-sensory teaching techniques which address every "learning style" without discrimination. (NKA)

2000

ED439402