This paper explores the extent to which student teachers, in their final year of a 3-year undergraduate programme teach phonics as part of a holistic reading programme linked to reading for meaning and for pleasure. It reports the results of surveys, lesson observations and interviews with a sample of students studying at one university in the…

Research has demonstrated the positive effects of systematically teaching phonemic awareness and phonics in kindergarten and first grade, but many commonly used reading curricula do not adequately incorporate these foundational skills. In this study, we examined the efficacy of an instructional program ("UFLI Foundations") in…

We report the effectiveness of using the tablet-game Kalulu Phonics immediately after intervention in kindergarten and on national evaluations the year after. In a previous intervention testing the software with 1st graders, fluency and comprehension were boosted, but only when used in concert with reading instruction at the start of the year.…

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted educational outcomes, including reading achievement in grades 3-5, particularly in schools primarily serving high-poverty communities of color. This study evaluates the 95 Phonics Lesson Library (95 PLL), a targeted phonics intervention program, in a low socio-economic status, ethnically diverse,…

This study, conducted by LXD Research, evaluates the 95 Phonics Lesson Library (95 PLL), a targeted phonics intervention program in a majority low SES, ethnically diverse midwestern school district from 2023-2024. Using a quasi-experimental mixed-method design, this study compares reading outcomes of fourth and fifth graders using 95 PLL with a…

This study explores the efficacy of core phonics and intervention products by 95 Percent Group, LLC ("One95"), drawing on the relationship between technology, the science of reading, and learning sciences. Researchers analyzed data from 440 K-1 students in Maryland that rolled out One95 over two school years, fall 2020 to spring 2022.…

Young children of Color from minoritized communities can co-author decodable stories using phonics skills they have been taught, their lived experiences, and home languages, including nondominant English languages, to develop decoding skills using student-generated decodable readers. While traditional and curricular decodable readers are used…

Background: The context of this research is reading literacy instruction in Foundation Phase classrooms in South Africa. Although large-scale studies have researched learner performance, little is known of the nuances of teachers' practice, particularly in the non-verbal realm. This research seeks to address that gap. Aim: This research…

Language and self-regulation develop bidirectionally, and they synergistically affect most aspects of acquiring reading proficiency. Children and youth from historically marginalized communities tend to have less expansive knowledge of academic vocabulary and dialect common to instruction and academic text (i.e., General American English), and…

When young children of Color from minoritized communities read decodable readers mandated by their school districts, children approach reading the texts with the expectation that the texts will make sense. While decodable readers allow children to apply their knowledge of phonics skills in context to support their word recognition, they tend to…

The term "balanced literacy" was popularized in the mid-1990s to describe a middle ground in terms of text selection, instruction, skills, and strategies. The intention was to merge the promising elements of whole language and phonics. Interactions with educators and literacy leaders across the country currently suggest that a term that…

The current study compared the reading growth of (a) students who received targeted interventions, (b) students who received typical school interventions, and (c) students who were proficient readers at the study's onset. The participants were 1,513 students in first through fifth grades who attended one of three treatment schools or one of three…

This is the second in series of studies designed to test direct and conditional effects of embedded cognitive practice in phonics instruction. Students identified in winter of kindergarten with minimal alphabet knowledge were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: explicit phonics (Plain) (n = 28) or explicit phonics with embedded cognitive…

This is the second in series of studies designed to test direct and conditional effects of embedded cognitive practice in phonics instruction. Students identified in winter of kindergarten with minimal alphabet knowledge were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: explicit phonics (Plain) (n = 28) or explicit phonics with embedded cognitive…

The purpose of this research was to analyze the performance of pupils (N = 6,023) who took part in Reading Recovery (RR) in England on a decoding test, the Phonics Screening Check (PSC), administered at the end of Year 1 when children are approximately 5 to 6 years of age. The data cover two academic years (2015/2016 and 2016/2017) and include…