In this study, it was investigated how the reading skills of students who were in the 3rd grade of primary school when the COVID-19 pandemic started (March 2020) were affected at the end of the fourth grade (June 2021) due to the school closure during the pandemic. The study employed the longitudinal survey model. Ten teachers and 18 primary…

Word spacing is important in guiding eye movements during spaced alphabetic reading. Chinese is unspaced and it remains unclear as to how Chinese readers segment and identify words in reading. We conducted two parallel experiments to investigate whether the positional probabilities of the initial and the final characters of a multicharacter word…

This study aimed to examine (a) the developing interrelations between the efficiency of reading individually presented words (i.e., isolated word recognition speed) and the efficiency of reading multiword sequences (i.e., word list and text reading fluency); (b) whether serial digit naming, indexing the ability to process multi-item sequences,…

Environmental sources of variance in the Italian vocabulary and reading skills of bilingual primary school children from immigrant families (or language minority bilingual children (LMBC)) in Italy were investigated, and the LMBC's skill levels were compared to those of their monolingual classmates. A total of 140 children from the first, third,…

Assessments of oral reading rate in words correct per minute (WCPM) have proliferated in elementary classrooms. This study explores the similarities and differences among students at the end of second grade who demonstrate low WCPM. Using latent profile analysis, readers with low WCPM compared to peers were identified (n = 2,191) from a state-wide…

Grounded in the simple view of reading, this study tracked the development of print-processing skill in high-, average-, and low-achieving readers at six time points across grades 1-3. Results showed large between-group differences in sight vocabulary, oral reading accuracy, and oral reading rate that remained stable from beginning of first grade…

This study investigated the efficacy of the Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) in improving reading achievement in primary grade struggling readers. 30 readers, enrolled in a summer reading clinic, participated in daily 40-min mini-reading lessons across 5 weeks. During the fluency lessons, readers practiced and developed their literacy skills…

Books designed for beginning readers typically intermix text with illustrations in close proximity. Prior research suggests this standard layout may reduce literacy skills due to increased attentional competition between text and illustrations. The current study extends this work by examining whether manipulations to the book layout can enhance…

Tier 3 interventions are necessary for improving the reading performance of students who fail to respond adequately to Tier 1 general education instruction and Tier 2 supplemental reading intervention. In this pilot study, we identified 8 students in 3rd and 4th grade who had demonstrated slow response to Tier 2 reading interventions for three…

The important role of reading fluency in the comprehension and motivation of readers is well documented. Two reading rate intervention programs were compared in a cluster-randomized clinical trial of students who were considered at-risk for reading failure. One program focused instruction at the word level; the second program focused instruction…

We report the associations between phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge in readers of alphasyllabic Kannada. Less fluent 9- to 12-year-olds with lower orthographic knowledge were at floor on phoneme tasks, but more fluent readers, with greater orthographic knowledge, showed significant phonemic awareness. Orthographic knowledge,…

The acquisition of reading skill was studied in 503 Italian children in first to eighth grade using a task that required reading of lists of words and non-words. Analysis of the metric characteristics of the measures indicated that reading speed but not accuracy was normally distributed across all ages considered. The role of specific effects…

This study described oral reading fluency and within word pattern spelling, using rate and accuracy as the fluency measures. Oral reading measures, including reading for one minute, reading an entire passage, word recognition in isolation, and in context reading accuracy were examined with 56 second, third, fourth, and fifth graders. All students…

We examined the double-deficit hypothesis in Finnish. One hundred five Finnish children with high familial risk for dyslexia and 90 children with low family risk were followed from the age of 3 1/2 years until Grade 3. Children's phonological awareness, rapid naming speed, text reading, and spelling were assessed. A deficit in rapid automatized…

This longitudinal study investigated children's performance on several informal reading and spelling tasks. Students (n = 274) in a rural North Carolina county were assessed across grades 2 to 6 on the following measures: isolated word recognition (timed and untimed), oral reading accuracy, reading comprehension, reading rate, and spelling.…