Research shows little benefit from phonics instruction in Grades 2 through 12. However, more recent studies show that students who fall below a decoding threshold fail to benefit from other kinds of reading instruction. This exploration of the evidence suggests that these students are likely to need support in the reading and spelling of…

Background: Lexical properties such as orthographic neighbours have been shown to have an influence on reading and writing; however, this phenomenon is yet to be explored in the Southern Bantu languages. Objectives: We investigate the role of orthographic neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency in reading and spelling in Grade 3 isiXhosa…

There is good evidence that high-quality instruction targeting reading-related skills in the classroom leads to gains in reading. However, considerably less is known about the possible efficacy of "remote" instruction. This study evaluated the efficacy of an interactive evidence-based language-rich literacy programme. 184 children were…

This cross-lagged study examined the classroom-level associations between the reading performance of first-grade students (N = 537) and observed literacy instruction activities in classrooms (N = 30) in the autumn and spring terms. The multilevel analyses indicated that lower average word reading skills in the classrooms (i.e., there were more…

A guide to understanding dyslexia in children and youth, with strategies for assessing and teaching reading and spelling. In today's digital world, reading and writing are more important than ever. Students are reading and writing text on smartphones, tablets, and laptops as well as in school for hours every day. Yet many of these students will…

Longitudinal studies on mainstream children and training studies in the dyslexic population suggest that visual attention span (VAS) abilities contribute to reading acquisition. We evaluated to what extent VAS training in beginning readers might enhance later literacy skills. A large cohort of 453 children was followed from the beginning to the…

In elementary school, an important goal of reading instruction is to enable children to read most words automatically by sight so that they can focus on learning from and enjoying what they are reading. But becoming a strong reader takes several years. Parents and caregivers need to know if a child is making good progress in learning to read.…

Author Wiley Blevins is renowned for changing the way educators think about teaching children to read, helping thousands of teachers implement effective phonics instruction. Now, Blevins gets us to think in powerful new ways about differentiating whole-class phonics lessons, so students at every skill level can engage. With Blevins' trademark…

Teachers' knowledge of literacy has gained considerable interest over the last three decades, largely with a focus on the basic language constructs of phonological awareness and phonics. Fewer studies, however, have focused on spelling. Given the close relationship between reading and spelling and the necessity of an explicit understanding of the…

Reading is one of the most well-studied aspects of human learning. Since the 1950s, with more interest, research tools, and funding available, the body of reading research has exploded: Every year, hundreds of new scientific papers are published. However, there has been a detrimental lag in ensuring this science is understood by the people who…

In our first article, we outlined some of the reasons for reading failure at the Early Childhood level and beyond, discussed common challenges students face, and explored essential components for quality reading instruction. We'll revisit the students you met in the first article to provide a window into how the Science of Reading can be…

English vowels are phonologically and orthographically more difficult than consonants when learning to map speech to print. We sought to determine if teaching young at-risk readers and spellers to use a visual vowel hand sign system to segment spoken words into their component phonemes contributed to improved grapheme-phoneme correspondence…

This single subject experimental design study used an adapted alternating treatment design to examine the effects of a synthetic phonics intervention and an analytic phonics intervention on oral reading accuracy, oral reading rate, and letter-sound correspondences among first grade students. Students who were reading at least two levels below…

Preventative and intensive reading intervention can be administered to at-risk students in a systematic way to help facilitate gains on literacy outcomes. Despite this fact, there are clear barriers to implementation. One solution may be to use paraprofessionals to provide supplemental reading instruction. This study employed meta-analytic…

In this dissertation I report findings from two studies of the literacy abilities of children with Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic disorder associated with intellectual disability. I had two overarching goals: 1) evaluate the applicability of theories of reading and spelling acquisition developed based on typically developing children to…