Background: Despite evidence that synthetic phonics teaching has increased reading attainments, a sizable minority of children struggle to acquire phonics skills and teachers lack clear principles for deciding what types of "additional" support are most beneficial. Synthetic phonics teaches children to read using a decoding strategy to…

The essential guide to the science behind reading and its practical implications for classroom teaching in primary schools. Teaching children to read is one of the most important tasks in primary education and classroom practice needs to be underpinned by a secure foundation of knowledge. Teachers need to know what reading entails, how children…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a brief experimental intervention that integrated spelling practice into a systematic phonics approach to initial reading instruction for at-risk children. The effects of this intervention were studied by means of a randomized controlled trial design that compared the experimental…

This article explores the 'reading wars' from the perspective of instructional psychology, which focuses on the environmental and instructional factors that facilitate students' progress in learning to read. It draws on research (computational analysis and classroom-based experimental studies) to inform a novel intervention that teaches reading…

This study examined how teachers in Tanzania understand and implement Phonics Instructional Approach (PIA) in the teaching of reading among early graders. Specifically, the study assessed teachers' pedagogical knowledge of the use of PIA and explored effective PIA practices used by teachers in literacy skills learning. The study employed…

Reading is one of the most significant academic skills and numerous students have difficulties with reading including students who are deaf and hard of hearing. An average student with hearing impairments graduates from a high school with a fourth-grade reading comprehension level that is alarmingly poor. Several reasons may cause this low reading…

The purpose of the Teacher Prep Review is to guarantee teachers have expertise in reading instruction (as well as other essential areas NCTQ assesses) before being trusted to teach children to read. By regularly reviewing the reading coursework provided by nearly 700 elementary teacher preparation programs, the National Council on Teacher Quality…

Some children experience more difficulty than others becoming literate, often at great emotional, intellectual, social, and economic cost to themselves, but also to those who love and care for them, and for society at large. The causes of those difficulties and what to do about them have been the source of much research and sometimes heated…

This study was designed to highlight how students best learn to learn to read, best practices of reading instruction, innovative resources, and effective instructional strategies. The aim of this dissertation was to address the problem of kindergarten through fourth grade students in the United States not reading on grade level. The purpose of…

Over the past decade, parent advocacy groups led a grassroots movement resulting in most states adopting dyslexia-specific legislation, with many states mandating the use of the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction. Orton-Gillingham is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive approach to…

For the purpose of this article within this special issue on Structured Literacy™, we were asked to address the code-focused skills of phonemic awareness and word reading. Findings from research studies converge to show that explicit and systematic instruction helps most students understand how speech sounds, or phonemes, map to letters and…

Learning to read is an expectation rather than an exception in society today. Despite this, some children experience reading difficulties. The purpose of this article is to review recent and seminal research on reading difficulties through the lenses of three perspectives: cognitive, social and cultural and interactive. The three perspectives are…

The twenty-first century Reading War is, in fact, nothing new, but some of the details are unique to our current culture driven by social media. This volume seeks to examine the current Reading War in the context of the historical recurrence of public and political debates around student reading abilities and achievement. Grounded in a media…

Individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS) present with significant deficits in reading skills, but scant research exists to understand the characteristics of the reading delays or best practices for reading instruction with this population. Study 1 examined the relationship between phonological awareness and reading skills in individuals with FXS.…

This article is a report of recent evidence on methods for teaching young and struggling readers to read words. Specifically, evidence comparing synthetic and analytic phonics instruction was reviewed as well as the benefit of instruction in encoding and morphological awareness. The evidence reviewed suggests that instruction in synthetic and…