摘要：AbstractIn recent years, thanks to global innovations in information technologies, constructivism as an approach which is “building forthcoming knowledge upon previous one in mind” is gaining popularity all around the world. To cope with changing concepts of the world, Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in Turkey has also made some radical changes in primary education curricula since the academic year of 2004-2005. The methods of elementary reading and writing have also been reformed. However, recently reformed elementary reading and writing curriculum is still under debate in terms of how constructive it is to help students learn to read and write. The purpose of this qualitative study was to enlighten in-service teachers and curricularists and explicit whether a huge gap does really exist between what is on paper and what is implemented according to responses of first grade students to certain tasks. Data were collected from 39 first graders taught at one of public primary schools in Ankara, Turkey in the second semester of the academic year of 2008-2009 when students have already been capable to read and write by means of the phonics method as they were expected to do so. Consisting of questions asking for recognition of block letters, awareness of lineworks done while writing letters, basic grammar rules such as writing cursive uppercase letters of “F, N, P, V, T”, writing homophonic words and finding in-text grammar errors, a task assignment was administered to students in order to gain insight about students’ associating knowledge with preexisting one in their minds. Results indicated that there were some deficiencies about the content and implementation of elementary reading and writing curriculum since what students reflected had some shortcomings and were open to doubt whether they constructed knowledge of elementary reading and writing taught by means of aforementioned curriculum or not. There were also suggestions made in order to revise and reconstruct elementary reading and writing curriculum for providing a better constructive (yet not deconstructive) learning of how to read and write.
关键词：Constructivism;elementary reading and writing curriculum;first grade;the phonics method
