The Whole Language Movement 1980s-1990s

1. The Whole Language Movement1980s-1990s Andrea Mooney

2. A Movement of Various Descriptions • Philosophy • Belief system • Attitude • Set of instructional strategies (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p. 407)

3. Approaching a More Precise Definition • A constructivist approach to learning based on the belief that “forming concepts about language—oral or written—is easier when learners are presented with whole, natural language” (Weaver, Gillmeister-Krause, & Vento-Zogby, 1996). • “not unnatural language patterns like ‘Nan can fan Dan” • “not the vastly simplified language of some primers in basal reading programs” • “not the bits and pieces of language found in many workbook exercises and skills programs” (Weaver, Gillmeister-Krause, & Vento-Zogby, 1996).

4. “Learning to read is natural” (Goodman & Goodman, 1979) • Children can learn to read in the same natural way that they learned to speak • Immerse them in a print-rich environment • Children learn to read and write best when the reading and writing are for authentic purposes • Reading whole texts; writing their own stories • Not immersed in readiness activities

5. The Debate • Phonics • Primary Need: Explicit Instruction in Letter-Sound Information • Phonics First • Whole Language • Readers’ Prior Knowledge + Text Knowledge to Construct Meaning • Text-Based Cues • Letter-Sound Information to Confirm or Self-Correct

6. Time Period • 1980s-1990s • Mid-to-late 1970s • 2001

7. Defining Features We know about a belief in presenting the “whole, natural language”…but what else is there? Constance Weaver (1996): Seven Key Attributes • Expectations for success as students engage in "real" reading, writing, and learning • Skills taught in context • Teacher support for learning: scaffolding   • Contextualized assessment emphasizing growth • Acceptance of learners  • Flexibility within structure • Supportive classroom community  (Weaver, C., Gillmeister-Krause, L., & Vento-Zogby, G., 1996)

8. #1: “Real” Reading, Writing and Learning Instead of “readiness” activities… Whole texts from the beginning

9. #2: Skills Taught in Context No skills taught in isolation; skills taught in the context of reading and writing Example: Phonics taught through discussion and activities related to a text read multiple times with the teacher • Teacher reads story several times • Children read story independently with teacher scaffolding learning with a cueing system: • 1. semantic cues: cues about meaning or what makes sense in the sentence or story • 2. graphophonic cues: cues about the letters and their sounds • 3. syntactic cues: cues about the grammar of the sentence (Walker, 2008, p. 42-3) • To help students confirm their predictions about unfamiliar words, the teacher would ask one of the following questions: • Did what you read make sense? (semantic cue) • What word would make sense and start with the sound of the beginning letter? (graphophonic cue) • Did the sentence sound like spoken English? (syntactic cue) How words work within a sentence, not in isolation

10. Defining Features #3-7 • Teacher support for learning: scaffolding • As in phonics example • Contextualized assessment emphasizing growth • Portfolio; Data on effort, learning process; Individual goal setting • Acceptance of learners  • Interests and needs • Flexibility within structure • Larger blocks of time for meaningful pursuits • Supportive classroom community  • Skills for interacting, resolving conflicts

11. Ties to the Past • John Dewey (1938, 1943) • Participating in learning by solving real problems of concern in the present (Whole Language: Learning to read by reading and writing) • Lev Vygotsky (1986) • Zone of proximal development and more knowledgeable others (Whole Language: Teacher scaffolds reading) • M. A. K. Halliday (1975) • Systemic linguistics • Louise Rosenblatt (1938/1976) • Transactional nature of reading See Goodman (1989)

12. Objections to Whole Language • Gough (1996): Two Primary Flawed Assumption • Assumption 1: learning to read develops in the same natural manner as learning to speak (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p.407) • Assumption 2: “skilled reading is a process in which minimal word-level information is used to confirm predictions about the upcoming words of text based on multiple sources of information” (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p. 410).

13. First Assumption Identified by Gough (1996) • learning to read develops in the same natural manner as learning to speak (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p.407) • The belief of whole language: immersion in print-rich environment  reading • Instructional Implications • First-language acquisition • Focus: meaning construction NOT teaching children the abstract structural units of letters and sounds(Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011) • Downplaying of explicit instruction in word-level skills and strategies • Letter-sound patterns: “caught, not taught” (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p. 407) • Smith and Elley (1994): “children learn to read themselves; direct teaching plays only a minor role” (quoted in Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p. 407)

14. Many Objected to Assumption 1 Support for Objection? New Zealand: 15-20% of New Zealand six-year-old whole-language students in Reading Recovery…despite print-rich environment and whole language approach Along the same lines Many US reading specialists objected: “stronger support system, especially for word learning, was needed for poor readers than what was provided by whole-language instructional principles” (McCormick & Braithwaite, 2008, p. 178) Bottom Line Counterargument: Learning to read is not like acquiring one’s native language.

15. Second Assumption Identified by Gough (1996) • “skilled reading is a process in which minimal word-level information is used to confirm predictions about the upcoming words of text based on multiple sources of information” (Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p. 410). • The belief of whole language: Readers use multiple text-based (NOT necessarily word-based) cues to identify unfamiliar words • Not phonics first; Instead: • picture cues, semantic sources of information, syntactic sources of information, preceding passage context, prior knowledge activated by the developing meaning of the text • use letter-sound information to confirm or self-correct predictions

16. Many Objected to Assumption 2 Support for Objection? • Research on graphophonic cues • Pressley (2006) noted that “the scientific evidence is simply overwhelming that letter-sound cues are more important in recognizing words…than either semantic or syntactic cues’ (p. 21)” (quoted in Tunmer & Nicholson, 2011, p. 411) And much of this research helped the pendulum swing away from whole language…

17. Pendulum Swings away from Whole Language • NCLB’s Reading First (2001) • Grants for “scientifically based” reading instruction awarded in grades K-3 • Only programs claiming scientific base defined by experimental studies qualified • More money went to programs using explicit phonics instruction • So much so… “often to the exclusion of reading literature and reading information” in beginning reading instruction (Walker, 2008, p. 47)

18. Timeline Overview Changes in phonics instruction preceding whole language 2001 Reading First Important Publications

19. References Baumann, J. F., & Hoffman, J. V. (1998). Where are teachers' voices in the phonics/whole language debate? Results from a survey of U.S. elementary classroom teachers. Reading Teacher, 51(8), 636. Goodman, Y. (1989). Roots of the whole-language movement. The Elementary School Journal, 90(2), 113-127. McCormick, S. & Braithwaite, J. (2008). Fifty years of remedial and clinical reading in the United States: A historical overview. In M. J. Fresch (Ed.), An Essential history of current reading practices (157-185). Newark, DE: International Reading Association Stahl, S. A., & Miller, P.D. (1989). Whole language and language experience approaches for beginning reading: A quantitative research synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 59, 87-116. Tunmer, W. E. & Nicholson, T. (2011). The development of word recognition skill. In M. L. Kamil, P. D. Pearson, E. B. Moje, & P. P. Afflerback (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research Volume IV, (405-431). Walker, B. J. (2008). History of phonics instruction. In M. J. Fresch (Ed.), An Essential history of current reading practices (33-51). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Weaver, C., Gillmeister-Krause, L., & Vento-Zogby, G. (1996) Creating support for effective literary education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.