Some children experience more difficulty than others becoming literate, often at great emotional, intellectual, social, and economic cost to themselves, but also to those who love and care for them, and for society at large. The causes of those difficulties and what to do about them have been the source of much research and sometimes heated…

From 2006 the British government strongly favoured synthetic phonics as the principal approach for the teaching of initial literacy in state-funded primary schools in England, and since 2010 has made it mandatory. In 2007-2013 just over 100 commercially published phonics schemes were available, and in that same period the government maintained a…

The paper highlights problems surrounding the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check that has accompanied the legislative framework for synthetic phonics in English primary schools. It investigates the inclusion of pseudowords and raises questions regarding their generation and categorization, the rationale for their inclusion and the assumption that the…

The First Grade Pre-Screening is designed to be used at the start of the first grade school year so that teachers can obtain information about their incoming students. This information is intended to give teachers insight about what math and reading skills a student may or may not have at the beginning of the year. The information can aid teachers…

This study explores the incidence of poor comprehenders, that is, children identified as having reading comprehension difficulties, despite age-appropriate word reading skills. It supports the findings that some children do show poor reading comprehension, despite age-appropriate word reading, as measured with a phonological coding test. However,…

Kindergarten students at-risk for reading difficulties were selected for participation in a reading program. Each parent provided instruction to his or her child using the reading program "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" ("TYCTR"). Parents were expected to use "TYCTR" with their child 15 minutes a night five nights a week. The…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the National Standards for Foreign Language Education have several areas of commonality: (1) both standards have the goal that all students, by the end of 12th grade, will have the skills they need to be successful world citizens; (2) the literacy skills that are found in the Common Core are the same…

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…

With the implementation of RTI, educators are attempting to find models that are the best fit for their schools. The problem solving and standard protocol models are the two most common. This study of 65 students examines a new model, the dynamic skills protocol implemented in an elementary school starting in their fourth quarter of kindergarten…