Teachers support student-centered learning by creating a literate environment, stimulating interest by helping children connect new experience with previous experience, and facilitating the learners' achievement of their own intentions. Teachers integrate the language arts by developing the curriculum around broad themes, such as Indians or mammals. Whole Language is rooted in the seminal work of John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, James Moffett, James Britton, Michael Halliday, Donald Graves, Margaret Donaldson, Gordon Wells, Glenda Bissex, Kenneth Goodman, Anne Haas Dyson, and Shirley Brice Heath. Children learn as they engage as active agents constructing their own coherent views of the world and of the language human beings use to interact with the world and with each other. The development of writing and reading is fostered by meaningful social interaction, usually entailing oral language.
Language learning is different from other school subjects.
It is not a new subject, and it is not even a subject. It permeates every part of people's lives and itself constitutes a major way of abstracting. One pervasive response to this understanding of language is the Whole Language movement. Heinemann Educational Books, 1986. The Whole Language Evaluation Book.