Phonemic awareness is a key building block for later reading and spelling development. Students at risk for reading difficulties may have difficulties with phonemic awareness and need additional instruction or intervention to develop these skills. This column discusses evidence-based phonemic awareness instruction and the implementation of…

Purpose: This study was designed to assess the efficiency of a French version of "GraphoGame" (GG) against an equally engaging math intervention ("Fiete Math," FM) in a large school sample of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in grade 1 (N = 921). Method: The intervention was implemented in two…

Fundamental research has indicated that (a) difficulties in reading are linked to a deficit in phonemic awareness and word reading and (b) in French, decoding and word reading are based on the syllable as a functional unit. A software program involving two tasks, namely, phonemic discrimination and grapho-syllabic segmentation, was proposed to…

ABRACADABRA (ABRA) is an evidence-based suite of interactive multimedia that engages learners in the development of core reading skills. This meta-analysis presents an update of the research evidence about the effectiveness of ABRA for elementary students. It reports 91 effect sizes in six reading-related outcomes for a sample of 7,388 students.…

In this pilot study, we evaluated the effects of the online computer-based training programme 'Lexilogy-Greek' on the reading and spelling performance of young poor readers and spellers. The training is based on psycholinguistic principles that emphasise the importance of acquiring efficient phonological as well as morphological knowledge in…

Invented spellings refer to incorrect attempts to spell words while writing, which are important indicators of children's development of phonemic awareness. Making Words is a popular activity to teach phonics and spelling, in which students manipulate letters in sequence to construct target words and then sort them into rhyming patterns. This…

Purpose: Children with autism have an increased likelihood of reading difficulties. The reasons for this are numerous and varied, but many children with autism can learn to read when they are provided with evidence-based early reading instruction. Method: Here, we provide an overview of some of the factors that impact early reading development for…

This paper addresses a gap in research regarding the efficacy of software programs to help children with reading difficulties. Forty-two children aged 5-13 years identified as poor readers participated in a study over twelve weeks using ReadingDoctor, a software program targeting phonemic awareness, orthographic-phonemic mappings, decoding ability…

Approximately two-thirds of community college students nationwide are considered to not be ready for the demands of college and are therefore required to enroll in at least one developmental education course. Unfortunately, researchers have found that enrollment in developmental classes often has adverse effects on community college students and…

Students who display reading difficulties/disabilities at the end of third grade are less likely to succeed in content areas and graduate from high school than their reading-proficient peers. Literature suggests that students in rural school districts lag behind their suburban peers in terms of their reading levels and accessibility to resources.…

Leading scholars (Gilbert, 2009; Walter, 2008) have highlighted the importance of phonological processing in learning to read. Nevertheless, reading in Japan has traditionally been taught without adequate attention to the role of phonological processing. Accordingly, it was speculated that Japanese university students would demonstrate superior…

For students who have limited expressive language skills, both verbally and in writing, it is difficult for a teacher to assess the acquisition of reading skills. The authors examined the effects of computer-aided instruction (CAI) on the early reading and reading comprehension skills of six students with autism spectrum disorder, and other…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether kindergarten-reading achievement could be increased by implementing Response to Intervention (RtI) strategies. Kindergarten children (N = 290) who were identified as at-risk for reading difficulties were assigned to receive intervention through a) small reading groups (SRG), b)…

This meta-analysis summarizes research on the effects of a comprehensive, interactive web-based software (AXXX) on the development of reading competencies among kindergarteners and elementary students. Findings from seven randomized control trials and quasi-experimental studies undertaken in a variety of contexts across Canada, Australia and Kenya…

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…