This study describes trajectories of early literacy skill development of 99 children (n = 55 boys) in their first year of primary school in New Zealand (NZ). Children were assessed twice weekly for 8 weeks on Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2011) First Sound Fluency (FSF) and AIMSweb Letter Sound…

The statutory "phonics screening check" was introduced in 2012 and reflects the current emphasis in England on teaching early reading through systematic synthetic phonics. The check is intended to assess children's phonic abilities and their knowledge of 85 grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) through decoding 20 real words and 20…

The present study was designed to determine whether alphabet letters facilitate the acquisition of phoneme segmentation skill and to test the assumption that letters make it harder for prereaders to learn segmentation than nondistinctively marked visual aids. (Author/PN)

Research literature is reviewed that shows a relationship between phonemic skills and learning to decode written words. Several tests that can be used to assess phonemic skills are described. The role of the school psychologist in screening and monitoring kindergarten and first grade children for possible deficits in phonemic skills is discussed.…

As part of a two-year project that examined the processes by which children initially approach the reading task, a screening test was designed to aid in the selection of the four kindergarten children who were to participate in the project. Consisting of seven parts, the test asked each child to do the following tasks: write his/her name; isolate…