Profiles Andre Allison and Florence Mondry, English teachers at Shoreham-Wading River High School (New York), who have placed composition at the center of their curricula, giving students more responsibility and fostering cooperative learning. Both use reading logs to help students interpret literature intelligently and extract meaning from their…

"Decodable text" devotees say phonics is scientifically superior to the whole-language approach, which supposedly lacks research validation. However, 60 years of research supports holistic, literature-based approaches to literacy. Whole-language instruction is further validated by research on independent reading, cooperative learning, Reading…