Concerned by a report that a number of seven-year-olds in their school were at risk for literacy difficulties, a team of teachers devised a low-budget program to promote reading at school and at home. After researching reading motivation, two of the authors conceived a catch phrase, a mascot, and gimmicks, including all-school activities, to…

An evaluation of Schoolwide Early Language and Literacy (SWELL) was undertaken in New South Wales, Australia, using a sample of 366 disadvantaged kindergarten students. Participants outperformed controls on pseudo-word decoding and reading connected text at the end of kindergarten, and on invented spelling and reading measures midway through first…