Children become talkers through natural learning processes.
Just as children acquire speech and language through these natural learning processes, they become readers in much the same way. Thus, as children read, these processes work together simultaneously in order to bring meaning and understanding to the text. Whole language is an approach to teaching language arts which emphasizes using meaningful texts and situations as the starting points for instruction. Teaching reading begins with the meaning of the whole text and focuses on the parts within that context. They need to be exposed to a variety of strategies based on our knowledge of how children learn and how they can best be taught.