Abstract
The paper summarizes three articles on the research supporting the effectiveness of phonics and phonemic awareness in teaching kids to read. The articles deal with research on the use of phonemic awareness and phonics in the classroom, and reading instruction.

From the Paper
"This paper is an examination of the findings and recommendations in Linnea C Ehri's Teaching Phonemic Awareness and Phonics An Explanation of the National Reading ..."

Tags:phonics, phoneme, phonemic, awareness

Abstract
This paper examines the commercial learning method for reading from the Saxon Publishing Company, known as Saxon Phonics. It looks at how the Saxon product's easy standardization of methodology and cookie-cutter approach explains its favored status among those who advocate standardized national testing as a kind of quality control of student performance.

From the Paper
"The Saxon website also stresses the value of phonics in a heterogeneous learning environment as a source of connection, and provides photographs of multicultural settings without justifying why this is so beneficial. Instead of offering data, Saxon Publishing implicitly connects itself and its learning methods to the recent initiative advanced by President Bush. "In January 2002 President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act-the most sweeping education reform bill in more than 35 years. The Act outlines expectations for Pre-K-12 learning programs that will drive education reform for years to come. It also includes the President's four basic education reform principles: stronger accountability for results, increased flexibility and local control, expanded options for parents, and an emphasis on proven teaching methods." (Official Website, 2004)"

Tags:phonics, standardization, learning, environment

Abstract
This paper investigates the difference in reading achievement of kindergarten students who receive phonics instruction and those who are instructed using whole language. It examines how, for many years, phonics was the method that most reading teachers and reading experts advocated as the best method to teach children to read and how, in recent years, phonics has come under attack from those who advocate whole language. It looks at how the controversy continues in the educational community and proposes a study to determine to monitor methods of teaching in different communities.

From the Paper
"The whole language approach can be tailored toward the students' reading potential. By utilizing students' pre-existing schema, teachers can build on concepts to help students gain additional knowledge. This approach allows students to learn at their own level and pace within whole language classroom instruction. Using this method, a higher level of reading comprehension is believed to be attained by the students (Czubaj, 1997). However, Manning (1995) argues that children who come to school with minimal language skills and inattention to print forms need a structured readiness program in kindergarten that includes phonics activities. This program in no way excludes the reading and enjoyment of children's literature and all related child language development activities."

Tags:kindergarten, lteachers, students, comprehension

Abstract
An evaluation of two methods of teaching English to children-- 'phonic instruction' method and 'whole language' method. The author reviews many studies investigating the effectiveness of these methods and discusses incorporating both methods into a lesson plan. The conclusion is to gear one's methods towards each individual child's needs and preferences.

From the Paper
"There have been many studies done on the effectiveness of phonetic instruction and those studies have been positive. The National Reading Panel conducted a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of phonetic instruction on reading and spelling. Overall, the impact of phonetic instruction on children had a large result of (.86) within this meta-analysis. Using phonetic instruction, reading and spelling improved moderately at (.53) and (.56) respectively (Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Shanahan, 2001). However, there are some critics of phonics that find that the NRP study on phonetic instruction is flawed and does not prove that phonetic instruction is the way to teach. One critic claims that the NRP study choice of methodology, research, and subjects provided unreliable results (Garan, 2001)."

Tags:linguistics, education, teacher, phonetic

Abstract
The paper discusses the whole language philosophy and explains how it emphasizes the meaning of text over the sounds of letters. The paper looks at the beliefs of advocates of the whole language approach but reveals that all of its premises have been contradicted by scientific investigations. The paper further relates that legislators in many American states have adopted policies designed to get phonics-based reading programs back into the classroom and strongly contends that the best approach for the overwhelming majority of children is phonics instruction. Finally, the paper outlines Project Follow Through, the largest educational study ever done, and its findings that the teaching method of direct instruction is the most effective.

Outline:
Learning To Read with Whole Language Ideology
History
"Whole Language" Faulted for U.S. Reading Woes
Back to Phonics
A Simple Solution
Project Follow Through: The Biggest Educational Study Ever

From the Paper
"The whole language philosophy advocates teaching children to read by exposing them to whole words in context. It often is described as learning to read in the same way that we learn to talk. It generally avoids phonic pronunciation of each word.
"Teachers of this system emphasize the meaning of text over the sounds of letters. Whole language is considered a "top down" approach where the reader constructs a personal meaning for a text based on using their prior knowledge to interpret the meaning of what they are reading (Reyhner, 2008).
"Whole language is a system that teaches students to look at the big picture and doesn't really give them the tools to understand what they are doing," says Ann Edwards, a 20-year teaching veteran, who is leading a class of first-graders in California (Hanson, 1999, p.2)."

Tags:instruction, spelling, punctuation, speech, comprehension, sounds, letters

Abstract
The purpose of the following paper is highlight what constitutes an appropriate balanced literacy framework; to wit, the next several pages will show how a blend of phonics and whole language instruction, cultural sensitivity on the part of the teacher (and an individualized approach to teaching each child) can foster success. The next several pages will describe an efficacious balanced literacy program, describe the necessary components for it, offer recommendations from the scholarly literature on balanced literacy can be implemented successfully in the classroom, will outline the challenges teachers face in seeing their plans come to fruition, and then finish up by looking at curriculum integration amongst the various subjects and how it can serve the interests of an instructor - and make no mistake about it: curricular integration is also a key element of a balanced literacy framework. In the end, if an instructor is committed to balancing phonemic awareness and phonics with whole language instruction, then it is possible for students to achieve grade-appropriate expectations.

From the Paper
Creating a Balanced Literacy Framework Introduction The purpose of the following paper is highlight what constitutes an appropriate balanced literacy framework; to wit, the next several pages will show how a blend of phonics and whole language instruction, cultural sensitivity on the part of the teacher (and an individualized approach to teaching each child) can foster success. The next several pages will describe an efficacious balanced literacy program, describe the necessary components for it, offer recommendations from the scholarly literature on balanced literacy can be implemented successfully in the classroom, will

Tags:balanced, literacy, framework

Abstract
This paper examines the two general approaches that have evolved to govern reading education, specifically phonics and whole language approaches. The paper discusses the contrasting underlying philosophies that these approaches represent and analyzes the different skills that they stress. The paper then focuses on the balanced approach to reading education.

From the Paper
"There are specific activities and application settings by which to integrate the balanced approach while relying heavily on the teacher's professional adaptive ability to adapt the best and most effective goal of research approach that they as instructors are innately entrusted with creating. Instructors must generate the most productive environment for learning.
"In the workshop setting, where students are reading books aloud together, or reading their own work aloud together. The types of work is determined by the specific differentiated learning unit, which can be indeed into learning units over the course of the year, from reading works of literature that may stir inspiration in the student, to reading aloud examples of each of the types of the literature according to learning unit, which the students are then assigned to emulate themselves and then read out loud in the next workshop."

Tags:book, comprehension, language, grammar, text

From the Paper
"Abstract
There are competing schools of thought on how to teach reading in the public schools today. Before the beginning of the 20th century, reading was taught using a phonics approach. During this century, other approaches have been tried and have failed to teach a significant portion of the students enrolled in public school to read easily and fluently with comprehension. The popular whole language curricula is contrasted with Distar, a reading program developed in the 60s, which is gaining new acceptance in the educational community. Distar is also known as Direct Instruction. It has been shown to be the most effective method of teaching reading to all children (Benjamin, 1981, p. 71). It meets the criteria for a phonics based, explicit, and systematic curriculum. It is easy for teachers to use including..."

From the Paper
"This research reviews literature relevant to the acquisition of language by children. The contemporary rage in the teaching and learning of language is the whole-language approach (Levine, 1994, pp. 38-43). The whole-language approach exposes children to interesting reading and writing at the expense of systematically teaching specific reading and writing skills. Whole-language teachers, for instance, encourage young students to recite along with them as the teachers read aloud from entertaining big-print books. One of the central tenets of the whole-language approach is that language should be learned from whole to part, with word-recognition skills being picked up by the child in the context of actual reading, writing, and immersion in a print-rich classroom (Bates, Bretherton, & Snyder, 1988, pp..."

Abstract
Through a review of ten articles, this paper looks at the importance of building up "domain knowledge" and prominently features the findings of a National Reading Panel study conducted some years ago that argues (among other things) that vocabulary building, phonemic awareness exercises, systematic phonics instruction, and in-service upgrades for teachers all positively correlate to student achievement.

Table of Contents:
Abstract
Article Summaries
Article Summary One: Teaching children to read
Article Summary Two: The Nature of Effective First-Grade Literacy Instruction
Article Summary Three: The Utility of Phonic Generalizations in the Primary Grades
Article Summary Four: Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge - of Words and the World
Article Summary Five: What Reading Does for the Mind
Summary Six: The Case for Bringing Content into the Language Arts Block and for a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Core for all Children
Summary Seven: Teaching Decoding
Summary Eight: One Down and 80,000 to Go
Summary Nine: Teaching Vocabulary: Early, Direct, and Sequential
Summary Ten: Findings and Determinations of the National Reading Panel by Topic Areas

From the Paper
"Theodore Clymer (1963) reports that five types of generalizations have historically been utilized (at least if teacher's manuals are any indication) in teaching children to pronounce words: vowels, consonants, endings, syllabication, and miscellaneous relationships. Eventually, Clymer came up with a list of 45 generalizations or rules for study. These were arrived at by asking whether or not a candidate generalization was sufficiently specific that it could be said to actually assist (or hinder) in the pronunciation of a particular word. Clymer then made up a composite word list of all the words introduced in the four basic series from which the generalizations were drawn - plus words from the Gates Reading Vocabulary for the Primary Grades. On pages 186 and 187 of the study, Clymer outlines the basic approach undertaken to assess the efficacy of the 45 phonic generalizations; this step-by-step approach is rather complicated and cannot be easily described in the space we are allotted. Nonetheless, the study found that many commonplace phonics generalizations are of limited worth; in particular, vowel generalizations are especially unreliable while consonant generalizations are a little better. One thing that complicates Clymer's study is that his success rate for an effective phonics generalization (75 percent or above) is quite high - as he himself acknowledges.

Tags:phonemic, domain knowledge, vocabulary building, phonics in-service