Asking the question of phonics vs whole language in reading is like asking a baseball coach if he teaches batting or baseball .
Batting is crucial to the game of baseball just as phonics is crucial to reading.
But there is much more to reading than phonics, just as there is more to baseball than batting. Good readers rely not only on phonics, but also on automatic recall of sight words, on meaning, and on syntax when reading and understanding text. Overriding all that are a student's life experiences and his willingness to take a risk for and ownership of his learning. We at University School teach students to orchestrate all three systems in a balanced and independent way. Occasionally skill teaching is removed from context, but as soon as possible it is incorporated into authentic reading for practice and application.