In 2022, for the first time since 2015, as part of the Annual Literacy Survey, the National Literacy Trust ran a survey for teachers and other school staff, asking about their attitudes to literacy as a whole, as well as reading, writing and speaking and listening. They received responses from 1,535 teachers from across primary, secondary and…

This paper describes an evaluation of an internet-based reading programme called Accelerated Reader (AR), which is widely used in UK schools and worldwide. AR is a whole-group reading management and monitoring programme that aims to stimulate the habit of independent reading among primary and secondary age pupils. The evaluation involved 349…

Dialogic Reading (DR) is a form of interactive shared book reading which promotes children's active participation in reading. Previous studies have demonstrated that DR positively affects young children's literacy development. This small-scale study extends existing DR research to all-male dyads to examine whether DR has a greater impact on boys'…

We report an empirical comparison of the effectiveness of two theoretically motivated computer-assisted reading interventions (CARI) based on the Finnish GraphoGame CARI: English GraphoGame Rime (GG Rime) and English GraphoGame Phoneme (GG Phoneme). Participants were 6-7-year-old students who had been identified by their teachers as being…

With the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy, England's primary school teachers were asked to replace "listening to children read"--a practice deeply embedded in UK pedagogy--with guided reading, a practice focused on interpretive and critical comprehension rather than accuracy and fluency. This small-scale research project…

Students often enter preservice teacher literacy curriculum and pedagogy classes with conflicting and certainly varied notions about which literacy practices matter in middle years classrooms. Debates about authentic learner-centered tasks versus basic skill acquisition circulate in the media, in school curricula, and in the talk of teachers and…

How and why is national policy translated into interactions between teachers and pupils? This article examines the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in a case study of two literacy lessons, which are drawn from a yearlong ethnographic study of the NLS in one school. Although the teacher taught directly from and adhered…

The aim of the UK National Literacy Strategy is to raise standards in literacy. Strong evidence for its success has, however, been lacking: most of the available data comes from performance on tests administered in schools or from Office for Standards in Education reports and is vulnerable to suggestions of bias. An opportunistic analysis of data…

One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school. By the time they complete the core, students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently the kinds of complex texts commonly found…

Describes how five and six year olds responded to and appropriated aspects of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). Outlines how the children displayed increasing literacy and collaborative skills while working with consonant blends, alphabetical order, and spelling. Concludes NLS is not the whole story in regards to learning about literacy. (PM)

A study examined the characteristics of teachers who can be shown to be effective in teaching literacy to primary pupils. Aims of the research were to: (1) identify the key factors in what effective teachers know, understand, and do which enable them to put effective teaching of literacy into practice in the primary phase; (2) identify the…

Examines problems associated with children's use of science text, the implied literacy demands of learning science from currently available science books and schemes, and the extent to which the current interpretation of literacy advocated by the National Literacy Strategy encompasses the skills needed to learn science from a book. Includes…

Aims to build upon the existing home literacy practices of a group of three- and four-year-old children living in the United Kingdom. Develops literacy materials and resources which could be borrowed from nursery and used within the home to promote children's literacy development. Indicates that much of children's reading was focused on popular…

Suggests that bilingual children, because of their sensitivity to contexts for using their two languages, are likely to have a heightened awareness of the possible range of contexts for literacy and the range of communicative functions which written messages may convey. Also argues for an apporach to early literacy that acknowledges the importance…

Argues for need to move beyond model of "parental" involvement in reading, which presently informs home/school reading programmes for linguistic-minority children in UK. First examines literature informing current model showing marked absence of studies on role played by siblings as mediators of literacy in new linguistic and cultural…