Reading on grade level by the third grade is such an important skill for children to acquire for success in elementary school and beyond. National literacy rates show that only about one in three American students perform at or above grade level in English Language Arts. The ABCUSD has approximately 4,000 teachers in the system. It is unlikely…

In 2016, a Midwestern state legislature passed the Read by Grade Three law that mandates students who are not proficient readers at the end of third grade to repeat the third grade. The problem is that teachers struggle with implementing effective instructional interventions, and they acknowledge their lack of experience with effective…

The role of academic writing in the development of academic literacy in university students has been considered in some depth in the literature. However, the view of lecturers as to the role and value of academic reading is notably less explored and warrants further exploration. Academic staff from a broad range of subject areas were invited to…

Despite scientific advances that have informed our understanding of reading acquisition and development, a profound gap exists between empirical findings and the implementation of evidence-based practices in the assessment and instruction of reading in school settings. The debate regarding the practical implications of the science of reading…

Despite scientific advances that have informed our understanding of reading acquisition and development, a profound gap exists between empirical findings and the implementation of evidence-based practices in the assessment and instruction of reading in school settings. The debate regarding the practical implications of the science of reading (SOR)…

Many middle-school students struggle with basic reading skills. One reason for this might be a lack of automaticity in word-level lexical processes. To investigate this, we used a novel backward masking paradigm, in which a written word is either covered with a mask or not. Participants (N = 444 [after exclusions]; n[subscript female] = 264,…

Developmental researchers often have research questions about cross-lag effects--the effect of one variable predicting a second variable at a subsequent time point. The cross-lag panel model (CLPM) is often fit to longitudinal panel data to examine cross-lag effects; however, its utility has recently been called into question because of its…

Fluent reading, which involves visual serial processing of letters/characters (i.e., visual temporal processing, VTP), greatly contributes to our daily life. The present study thus explored the underlying mechanism of reading fluency from the perspective of VTP. A longitudinal method was adopted to examine whether VTP skills in preschool (mean age…

In this essay, we reinterpret critical literacy through our engagement with structured word inquiry (SWI). By reflecting upon our experiences within a literacy practicum for educators earning their reading specialist certification, we demonstrate how SWI can provide students and educators with opportunities to transcend the limitations of a scope…

A grassroots movement of parents who fear that their children's reading struggles are going unrecognized at school has led to dyslexia laws in all but three states in the U.S. The current study was undertaken to provide data relevant to this topic by characterizing the reading profiles of 71 children referred for testing at a center specializing…

Purpose: Impairments in statistical learning abilities of individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) have been demonstrated in word segmentation and in visual artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks, but so far, little attention has been devoted to the AGL abilities of this population in the acoustic verbal domain. This study aimed to test…

Traditionally, students receiving assistance while taking a test is deemed cheating, a belief based on the premise that assessment needs to evaluate unassisted performance. However, to the proponents of Sociocultural Theory in general and Dynamic Assessment (DA) in particular, such guidance through interaction with the examiner during the…

Research has demonstrated that computer assisted instruction (CAI) can have positive impacts on various literacy skills, however its impact on specific comprehension skills is currently unclear. This study employed a small-scale randomized control trial to examine the impact of a researcher-developed adaptive computer assisted instructional…

Objective: Reading is an indispensable skill. The study investigated the effects of music therapy on the reading skills of pupils with intellectual disability. Methods: An experimental research design was used. The sample was purposively selected from two special schools for pupils with intellectual disability in Ibadan, Nigeria. Seventeen pupils…

It is widely accepted that general intelligence and phonological awareness contribute to children's acquisition of reading and spelling skills. A further candidate in this regard is orthographic knowledge (i.e., the knowledge about permissible letter patterns). It consists of two components, word-specific (i.e., the knowledge of the spelling of…