Stagnant standardized test scores keep literacy achievement at the forefront of national education discussions. Increased conversations about the science of reading have propelled investigations into different types of phonics instruction. However, questions still linger such as "Which strategies are most effective for which students?",…

To be effective teachers of literacy for students who read braille, we need to know what our students' strengths and needs are as all these components come together in braille literacy. Using an appropriate assessment that addresses the skill sets involved in braille literacy is critical to putting together effective intervention packages for our…

We report results from children learning to read in one of four different languages: Croatian, English, Estonian and Swedish. The languages all have an alphabetical script but vary greatly on the dimension deep-shallow (or complexity-simplicity, or opacity-transparency), i.e., how close orthography and phonology are related. These languages also…

Both school and district administrators use the results of standardized, large-scale tests to inform decisions about the need for, or success of, educational programs and interventions. However, test results at the school level are subject to random fluctuations due to changes in cohort, test items, and other factors outside of the school's…

Purpose: The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared…

The overlapping waves model put forth by Robert Siegler emphasizes variability, adaptive choice, and gradual change in children's problem solving. These concepts were applied to emergent reading of an alphabet book with pages of three difficulty levels. Ninety-one kindergartners completed tests of emergent literacy. Twice, about 12 weeks apart,…

Research on the development of reading skills in bilingual students suggests that reading skills develop interdependently across languages. The current study examined the effects of a French reading fluency intervention on the French and English reading skills of three Grade 3 students attending a French immersion program using a concurrent…

In 2010, the province of Ontario introduced a new universal two-year play-based full-day kindergarten program. The authors exploited the phasing-in of this program over five years, allowing a natural experiment in which children from full-day kindergarten could be compared with those from half-day kindergarten in matched neighborhoods. Children (N…

In this study we evaluated whether the sophistication of children's invented spellings in kindergarten was predictive of subsequent reading and spelling in Grade 1, while also considering the influence of well-known precursors. Children in their first year of schooling (mean age = 66 months; N = 171) were assessed on measures of oral vocabulary,…

We examined the direction of the relation between morphological awareness and reading/spelling skills in 2 languages varying in orthographic consistency (English and Greek) and whether word reading fluency and vocabulary mediate the relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. One-hundred and 59 English-speaking Canadian and…

This longitudinal study of 78 Canadian English-speaking students examined the applicability of the stability, cumulative, and compensatory models in reading comprehension development. Archival government-mandated assessments of reading comprehension at Grades 3, 6, and 10, and the Canadian Test of Basic Skills measure of reading comprehension…

Prominent models of word reading concur that the development of efficient word reading depends on the establishment of lexical orthographic representations in memory. In turn, word reading skills are conceptualised as supporting the development of these orthographic representations. As such, models of word reading development make clear…

We examined the role of a hypothesized factor in reading comprehension: morphological awareness, or the awareness of and ability to manipulate the smallest meaningful units or morphemes. In this longitudinal study, we measured English-speaking children's morphological awareness, word reading skills, and reading comprehension at Grades 3 and 4, in…

This study examined cross-language transfer of word reading accuracy and word reading fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Participants included 51 Spanish-English and 64 Chinese-English bilinguals. Both groups of children completed parallel measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy,…

Reading is typically considered a survival skill in our technology- and literacy-bound culture. Individuals who struggle with learning to read are at significantly elevated risk for a number of negative outcomes, including school failure, under- and unemployment, and special education placement. Thus, those who do not learn to read fluently will…