Empirical research has systematically demonstrated the predictive role of reading, linguistic and metacognitive skills on reading comprehension performance. The study of the directionality of these relations and their relative contribution in the more advanced grades of primary school is an important aim for reading research, with practical…

Research has widely demonstrated the contribution of word reading, listening comprehension skills, and oral reading fluency to reading comprehension performance. However, the existence of reciprocal relations among these skills has been investigated less frequently. The authors examined the directionality of the relations among reading…

Empirical research has shown that poor comprehenders use reading strategies less frequently than good comprehenders. Moreover, poor comprehenders tend to use simple strategies (e.g. slowing down reading when the text is hard to understand) instead of using more complex strategies (e.g. choosing between main and trivial information). The present…

Reading comprehension is an important skill throughout all stages of education. However, Portuguese pupils still demonstrate difficulties in understanding what they read. In addition to cognitive and psychological factors, it is important to understand how this skill is addressed in textbooks. Here, we examined how reading comprehension is…

The integration of virtual manipulatives in classroom practices facilitates student learning processes. For this, the teacher must understand how to support students in establishing mathematical connections between the manipulation and their interpretations of the representations. We present a learning scenario that integrates the use of virtual…

Home literacy environment explains between 12 and 18.5% of the variance of children's language skills. Although most authors agree that children whose parents encourage them to read tend to develop better and earlier reading skills, some authors consider that the impact of family environment in reading skills is overvalued. Probably, other…

The relevance of reading prosody on reading comprehension has been theoretically proposed and empirically recognised. The present study aimed to investigate longitudinal and concurrent relationships between reading prosody and reading comprehension processes, beyond decoding and word reading efficiency. Two cohorts of Portuguese children, ranging…

Despite recent attention, research is yet to adequately focus on sports coaches' intellectual development as a consequence of their formal learning experiences. Drawing on the work of Perry, the aim of this article was to explore how the intellectual development of undergraduate sports coaching students was affected by the social pedagogical…

The aim of this study is to analyse the effect of tasks on the detection of explanation obstacles when secondary school students read scientific texts. Students were instructed to read short passages under different task conditions, and to ask questions if necessary. Obstacle detection was operationalised in terms of the type of questions asked by…

Recent research has suggested that emotional sentences are understood by constructing an emotion simulation of the events being described. The present study aims to investigate whether emotion simulation is also involved in online and offline comprehension of larger language segments such as discourse. Participants read a target text describing…

This study explored American and Portuguese elementary teachers' preferences in planning for literacy instruction using the Language Arts Activity Grid (LAAG; Cunningham, Zibulsky, Stanovich, & Stanovich, 2009), on which teachers described their preferred instructional activities for a hypothetical 2-h language arts block. Portuguese teachers…

The impact of a hybrid Sport Education-Invasion Games Competence Model (IGCM) unit of instruction on students' game performance and game understanding in soccer was examined in this study. Pre- and posttest measures were collected from one fifth grade class of students (n = 24, mean age 10.3) residing in Portugal during a 17-lesson unit of…

This article reports a study which examined the effects of an "Awakening to Languages" (AtL) programme on preschool children's language abilities. This programme aimed at exposing children to language and cultural diversity as well as promoting positive attitudes towards different languages and cultures amongst children. However,…

This study aims to present the main aims of a study skills project developed in two main interrelated sections: diagnosis and intervention. In the diagnosis process, the used a questionnaire ("Queststud") directed to the students allowed the assessment of the comprehension/retention and writing levels of competence. On the other hand,…

This study examined the effects of the accumulation of family risk factors on children's literacy skills, both in preschool and in first grade. Children's (N = 106) vocabulary, conventions of print, phonological awareness, knowledge of letters, reading decoding, and reading comprehension were assessed. Family risk factors, consisting of household…