The teacher may be in conference with a single child or working with a group of kids on a project. Occasionally, the entire class comes together. They might share a common lesson in reading and writing taught by the teacher. Or they might participate in author's corner, where children share their work with classmates. You'll even hear them singing to ease transitions and build community.
Spelling is taught in the context of reading and writing.
And reading and writing are taught by well, by reading and writing. But even in such a child-centered environment, problems exist. And those problems are intensified in areas of high poverty, in neighborhoods where violence flares nightly, in communities fractured by indifference and neglect, and in classrooms with upwards of 35 or 40 students, many of them at-risk or learning disabled. These early years, the years in which children shine and show so much promise, are increasingly the years in which children begin a slide into lifelong failure. Forty-two percent were unable to reach even the basic level of performance, which requires only literal comprehension of reading passages.