The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a simple contingency contracting intervention on the correct use of punctuation marks in freely produced texts by elementary school children with learning disabilities. This approach can be considered a promising strategy for facilitating the development of academic skills in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to investigate the influences of calendar year, year level, gender and language background other than English (LBOTE) on student achievement in literacy and numeracy relative to class size. Design/methodology/approach: Data for this study were collected over five years (2008-2012) as test results from the…

Since 2008 Australia has held the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (known as NAPLAN) for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Despite the multilingual character of the Australian population, these standardized literacy and numeracy tests are built on an assumption of English as a first language competency. The capacity for…

In this study we propose a classification system for spelling errors and determine the most common spelling difficulties of Greek children with and without dyslexia. Spelling skills of 542 children from the general population and 44 children with dyslexia, Grades 3-4 and 7, were assessed with a dictated common word list and age-appropriate…

Extensive research indicates that there are more boys than girls who are struggling readers, although considerable variation in gender ratios has been reported as a result of a lack of consensus in defining and measuring poor reading. The purpose of this study was to establish stable and consistent gender ratios for poor reading using a single…

This paper investigated six to nine year old children's ability to use contractive and possessive apostrophes, the effects of type and token frequency, and the effect of teaching on this ability. Apostrophes provide an interesting opportunity to examine the basis of frequency effects in rule inference, as type and token frequencies dissociate in…

Curriculum-based measures have been validated for use in evaluating reading, mathematics, and writing skills (Marston, 1989). Despite its common use by school psychologists (Wilson & Reschly, 1996), the relationship between the Woodcock Johnson-Revised and curriculum-based measures of writing has not been evaluated. This study investigated the…