arning and teaching. We heard that in whole language classrooms, children actually want to read and write; that teachers close to burnout have embraced the challenges of teaching with new enthusiasm; and that entire schools and school systems, states, and provinces have turned to this kind of teaching, which has been hailed as holding great promise for developing literate citizens and lifelong learners. But what is 'whole language'? As the term becomes more widely used, it seems to become less clearly understood... It is important to emphasize that whole language is a philosophy, a belief system about the nature of learning and how it can be fostered in classrooms and schools... In whole language, language is kept whole, not fragmented into 'skills'; literary skills and strategies are developed in the context of whole, authentic literary events, while reading and writing experiences permeate the whole curriculum; and learning within the classroom is integrated with the whole life of the child... Meaningful and enduring learning occurs most readily as the result of an active process of meaning-making... A transactional model reflecting the fact that the learner actively engages with--or transacts with--the external environment, including people and books, in order to learn.
"Whole language is a philosophy of teaching and learning based on the assumption that children learn to read and write through encounters with real text rather than from sets of practice exercises" (Altwerger, Edelsky, & Flores, 1987, in Language arts, computers, and the gifted student).
These authors go on to list a number of additional assumptions, viz.:
Learning is social; requires risk-taking and experimentation; involves constructing meaning and relating new information to prior knowledge; occurs when learners are actively involved, when they have real purposes, when they make choices and share in decision-making; uses language, mathematics, art, musi...