Whole language/ skills based

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Whole language/ skills based
By Colleen

I've done reading both ways. I do a combination of both. I equate skills based to building a house and whole language to tearing down a house.I feel the students need a background of phonics in order to have a starting point. Then we take a story and begin by listening to it and then the kids dive in by reading it and analyzing the components-words, content,and the reading skills like main idea, characterization, setting, sequence. I feel you get a lot more out of the story if you tear it down. The kids get more excited about reading the story if they know what it is about.
When we built the story from sounding out words it was not as exciting to the kids.