Background: Research acknowledges the importance of phonological processing and orthographic processing for reading and spelling in both consistently and inconsistently written languages. While the focus has tended to be on the role of phonological processing in languages with consistent orthographies, the role of orthographic processing,…

Docklands Primary School opened its doors in Melbourne in January 2021. In this case study, Emina McLean, Head of English, describes how Sounds-Write was implemented in Foundation to Year 2 in the middle of the pandemic. Despite four lockdowns forcing periods of online teaching, various standardised tests show 80% of students on average meeting or…

Most private schools in India follow the Alphabet-Spelling method to teach reading in English. This approach bypasses letter-sound correspondences and focuses on rote memorization and sight-word recognition. In an effort to provide students with more recent evidence-based practices in reading instruction, this study examined how phonics-based…

This transnational comparative study between Costa Rica and the United States provides an in-depth understanding of the similarities and differences of the early literacy practices of educators in the Pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten classroom settings. Drawing upon Costa Rica's curricular approach to Early Childhood Education, based upon the…

Background: The need to examine teachers' learning activities in reading literacy instruction arises from concerns about reading proficiency levels in the Namibian Junior Primary phase, where reading literacy is a fundamental skill crucial for academic success. Aim: The study examined the learning activities used for reading literacy instruction…

Teachers in England and South Australia annually administer the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) to Year 1 students, with the purpose of identifying struggling readers. Students who do not meet the score threshold have not met the expected standard of word-decoding ability, meaning further support may be warranted. We sought to quantify the extent to…

Upon entering high school, students with ID who may be able to read simple texts often have difficulty grasping meaning when required to understand more complex texts. This failure affects their overall academic performance, since at this age, it is no longer just a question of learning to read, but rather of reading to learn, in all disciplines.…

The purpose of the present study is to explore cross-cultural differences among teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) on the basic language constructs and the impacts on their perceived teaching ability in English-reading instruction. Chinese EFL (n = 73) and Korean EFL (n = 39) teachers were administered the Reading Teacher Knowledge…

The aims of this study were to (a) compare sight word training and phonics training in children with dyslexia, and (b) determine if different orders of sight word and phonics training have different effects on the reading skills of children with dyslexia. One group of children (n = 36) did 8 weeks of phonics training (reading via grapheme-phoneme…

This study explored American and Portuguese elementary teachers' preferences in planning for literacy instruction using the Language Arts Activity Grid (LAAG; Cunningham, Zibulsky, Stanovich, & Stanovich, 2009), on which teachers described their preferred instructional activities for a hypothetical 2-h language arts block. Portuguese teachers…

In this study we examined the effectiveness of a reading intervention targeting a group of 24 struggling readers in ten primary schools in Ireland. The intervention consisted of two components; component one consisted of 15-20 minutes delivery of the Toe-by-Toe programme (a well established systematic synthetic phonics programme) and the second…

The Report of the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) identified five key elements that were critical to the development of reading, and these have been widely accepted by educational jurisdictions as providing definitive guidelines for early reading instruction. This paper presents a case for the inclusion of oral language and early literacy…

Rapid Phonics is a synthetic phonics intervention intended to improve decoding skills and reading fluency. It teaches the relationship of word sounds to their corresponding letter groups in a structured way. In this evaluation, the intervention was delivered across the transition between primary and secondary school to Year 6/7 pupils who had not…

This study explores the incidence of poor comprehenders, that is, children identified as having reading comprehension difficulties, despite age-appropriate word reading skills. It supports the findings that some children do show poor reading comprehension, despite age-appropriate word reading, as measured with a phonological coding test. However,…

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive genetic condition that affects both muscle and brain. Children with DMD are at risk of psycho-social difficulties such as poor academic achievement and behavioural and socio-emotional problems. This article by Janet Hoskin and Angela Fawcett, both from the University of Swansea, describes how 34…