Teaching children to read is one of the most fundamental goals of early years and primary education worldwide, and as such has attracted a large amount of research from a range of academic disciplines. The aims of this paper are: (a) to provide a new critical examination of research evidence relevant to effective teaching of phonics and reading in…

Background: In the context of the ongoing crisis in early reading literacy in South Africa, this article gives insight into teacher practices which reduce learners' opportunities to read continuous text for meaning. Aim: This ethnographic study investigated the microcosm of teacher practices in well-resourced environments. Setting: A purposive…

Sounds-Write is a systematic synthetic phonics approach that has been successfully used to teach students to read and spell for the last two decades. This volume brings together twelve case studies -- written by practitioners -- of implementation of the Sounds-Write programme in different settings and geographical contexts (Europe, US, Australia).…

This paper aims to present a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC), with special focus on the relationship between the UK Department for Education's policy-making and the evidence considered in the process of developing and evaluating the PSC. The reports from the in-house Standards and Testing Agency and from commissioned…

The learning of modern languages in primary school (PL) was recently promoted to statutory status in the curriculum of England and Wales, but practice remains patchy. Low PL capacity amongst primary school teachers and constraints on curricular time persist. Viewed through the lenses of policy, learning theory and context, current PL practice can…

Reading Recovery is an early intervention program used around the world for at-risk readers. Developed at a time when constructivist principles dominated educational philosophy, its efficacy has caused debate and division over the last three decades. This qualitative study employed in-depth interviews and observations to explore 10 Reading…

Success for All (SfA) is a whole-school approach to improving literacy in primary schools. Teachers receive training in areas including group learning strategies, phonics, and assessment, and are provided with structured daily lesson plans and teaching materials. There is also support for school leadership in areas such as data management, ability…

Various South African and international studies indicate that the preparation of teachers to teach reading is inconsistent across universities worldwide. Teacher preparation programmes lack rigorous research-based findings as the grounding for their programme design. Recommendations of some studies point to the fact that evidence-based research…

Recent Australian and international government reports refer to the importance of teacher knowledge in the sound structure of language and its relationship to beginning reading. In this study, a group of 162 pre-service teachers responded to a questionnaire including questions related to their attitudes towards using phonics instruction in the…

It is well-established that language skills are amongst the best predictors of educational success. Consistent with this, findings from a population-based longitudinal study of parents and children in the UK indicate that language development at the age of two years predicts children's performance on entering primary school. Moreover, children who…

Investigates whether Brazilian Portuguese-speaking prereaders who have mastered letter names are capable of processing letter-sound relations to learn to read words in which the letters correspond to phonemes contained in the names of the letters. Suggests they can use their knowledge of the names of the letters to learn to read by processing and…

Describes the phonic/analytic/syntactic method used for teaching reading in grades one through four in Cuba. (AEA)

Reflects on a small-scale survey of nine schools in England where results of the National Curriculum test in spelling were particularly high. Discusses common approaches among the schools, including the teaching of spelling patterns and phonics; the fostering of early independence in writing and reading; and the regular learning of spelling at…

This list of year-by-year statements has been drawn together from England's National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching, with a particular focus on reading. The statements also take into account the stages set out in "Progression in Phonics" and the criteria for assessing reading in National Curriculum assessment at Years 2 and 6.…

A study of 16 first-grade Greek children with literacy difficulties and 16 controls found that the time needed to process a written item was the crucial index of difficulty in literacy acquisition and that phonemic awareness and speech rate tasks were predictors of learning to read and spell Greek words. (Author/CR)