Reading interventions developed to teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) were evaluated among L2 at-risk readers. In the direct mapping of grapheme (DMG) condition, children's attention was explicitly drawn to the application of a graphemes taught on that day to shared reading of words in authentic text. In the control condition there was…

We evaluated two experimenter-delivered, small-group word reading programs among at-risk poor readers in Grade 1 classes of regular elementary schools using a two-arm, dual-site-matched control trial intervention. At-risk poor word readers (n = 201) were allocated to either (a) Direct Mapping and Set-for-Variability (DMSfV) or (b) Current or…

This paper reports the follow-up of a randomised control trial study of the ABRACADABRA web-based literacy intervention that contrasted synthetic versus analytic phonics (Comaskey, Savage & Abrami, 2009) in kindergarten children from urban low-SES backgrounds. Participants who received a "synthetic" phonics+phoneme awareness training (n = 26) or…

This report describes a cluster randomized control trial (RCT) intervention study of the effectiveness of the ABRACADABRA (ABRA) Web-based literacy system using a classroom-level RCT intervention with 1,067 children in 74 kindergarten and Grade 1 or Grade 1/2 classrooms across Canada. The authors closely followed the CONSORT criteria for executing…

The current study developed a taxonomy of reading skills and compared this taxonomy with skills being trained in 30 commercially available software programs designed to teach emergent literacy or literacy-specific skills for children in preschool, kindergarten, and Grade 1. Outcomes suggest that, although some skills are being trained in a…