Different Methods to Teach Literacy

Different Methods to Teach Literacy

There has always been great debate over which method is best when teaching children to read. I personally believe that it is up to the individual to decide which method feels right to them.

Detailed below is some information about the different ways in which literacy can be taught.

Whole language

In a nutshell, whole language is teaching children to read for meaning. To begin with children are generally given high-quality, colourful books which contain a lot of repetitive text such as: 'I am skipping', 'I am drinking'. Due to the repetition the child is able to predict the words and over time will start to recognise these words instantly. The nouns or verbs that differ on each page can be predicted by looking at the colourful picture alongside the text.

The focus of reading with whole language is on gaining the correct meaning, therefore there is less concern with reading accuracy. So if a child misreads a word such as 'street' and instead replaces it with 'road', this would be considered fine as the miscue (the error) has not changed the meaning of the text.

Children taught by this method will recognise words by their general shape.

Here is an example of a book a new entrant child would be given when taught with whole language (and mixed methods):

For more detailed information on whole language, you could visit the Wikipedia site through this link.

Mixed Methods or Balanced Approach

This is exactly what it sounds like, a mixture of methods. This is the most common way that literacy is taught today among English speaking countries, except for England who made it policy to use synthetic phonics in 2007.

Children are taught using a mixture of whole language and phonics (such as embedded, analytical and analogy phonics). For more information about the phonics methods used please see our The Different Types of Phonics link.

When a child (being taught with mixed methods) first learns to read books, which will probably be on their first day of school, the child will read using whole language skills. With mixed methods, however, importance is also placed on the child learning other skills such as the sounds of the language and how words work. So as they progress they will use both phonics and whole language skills.

Of course each teacher teaches differently. So mixed methods isn't clear cut. Some teachers will use mainly phonics with a little whole language, or the opposite. It comes down to the personal experience and preference of teachers and their principals.

Synthetic Phonics

Synthetic phonics is pretty much the complete opposite of whole language in that children are not expected to recognise

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