Children from low-SES backgrounds are considered to be at-risk for academic failure, particularly with respect to development of written language. This report compares the reading gains of low-SES, at-risk kindergarten students within two curricula collaboratively written by classroom teachers and speech-language pathologists. The alphabet based curriculum utilized specific activities to teach the recognition of letters and sound-letter correspondences. The whole language curriculum taught these abilities as a part of the exploration of children's literature. Children in the whole language curriculum showed greater gains in measures of the use of print to represent meaning and similar gains in learning sound-letter correspondences and letter names. These results suggest that whole language instructional strategies provide appropriate instruction for at-risk students.
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