Addressing the issues of how phonics is handled in whole language classrooms and the role that phonics plays in reading and learning to read, the content of this book is rooted in the language stories and literacy lessons of teachers' observations of at-risk children learning to read. The book begins with an introduction to one whole language teacher's classroom and to his philosophy. The second chapter describes a typical classroom day so that readers can have a sense of how children learn about letter-sound relationships across the day. The third chapter looks at the growth of three children over the course of a year. The fourth chapter makes explicit the role of the teacher, so that teaching and learning about grapheme-phoneme relationships from a whole language perspective might be more easily understood. One table and 36 figures consisting of students' drawing and writing are included. (RS)