The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the verbal interventions produced by teachers to support pupils' development of orthographic knowledge through invented spelling in three research-based intervention conditions: conventional (C condition), proximal (P condition), and progressive complexification (PC condition). We recorded six…

This paper describes the textual practices of kindergarten children as they co-created and participated in a movie theatre play context within their rural classroom. Data informing this paper were drawn from classroom videos of children (aged 3-5 years) as they engaged in activities associated with the movie theatre, field notes from action…

This thematic analysis utilizes teacher insights from their experiences in an online professional development (PD) course on early reading instruction to determine course design features educators perceive as being beneficial and questions and concerns educators raised during the course. We analyzed discussion forum contributions and course…

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…

The purpose of this experimental study was to examine the contribution of phoneme awareness training and orthography to the learning of new vocabulary words by partial alphabetic phase readers. Hypotheses included: Preschoolers taught to phonemically segment words with letters would outperform those trained without letters on an invented spelling…

We examined the progress made by 132 six-year-old French-speaking children in their preliteracy skills during four kinds of interventions. Three of these interventions concerned invented spelling, where the children tried to spell words. In the first condition, they were encouraged to reflect on conventional spellings. In the second condition,…

This research describes the biliteracy learning of young bilingual children in an English as a Second Language classroom. In particular, it explores factors influencing their biliteracy in a context that provided systematic and formalized instruction only in English. Using a holistic perspective on bilingualism and sociocultural theories of…

Consistent with a social-interactive view of literacy development, this report describes a method, Talk, Write, and Read (TWR), that unites the three important and related language processes in its title. In one-on-one, adult-and-child interactions, TWR involves children in talk about a picture book, spelling of target words in the book, and…

On April 8, 2016 when the class was discussing "digital literacy," a shocking news story from London AP intrigued us. The news was about a brief text message delivered by Ahmed, a refugee Afghan boy of 6-year old. His text message flashed on the cellphone of Liz Clegg, a volunteer at a migrant camp in France. Clegg and other volunteers…

This teaching study tested whether guiding invented spelling through a Vygotskian approach to feedback would facilitate kindergarten children's entry into literacy more so than phonological awareness instruction. Participants included 40 kindergarteners whose early literacy skills were typical of literacy-rich classrooms, and who were receiving a…

During her first two years of teaching, a kindergarten teacher (first author) developed a writing program grounded in five instructional strategies that repeatedly appear in emergent writing research--modeling, Scaffolded Writing, invented spelling, word walls, and reader response--and in the overarching principle of Gradual Release of…

Recent research in literacy acquisition has led to an elaboration of instructional programmes that focus on supporting children's progress through successive developmental levels. An example of such an approach is "analogy instruction," the basis of which is that children develop a system of recognition of shared patterns within words…

The present study compared the effects of different mediation routines provided to kindergartners from families of low socioeconomic status on the students' invented spelling attempts and on their gains obtained on spelling and other early literacy skills (letter naming, sounds of letters, word segmentation, and word decoding). The effects of the…

Given the problems experienced by hearing-impaired individuals in learning the written language, a pedagogical approach was tested. The study examined the links between the development of representations of alphabetic system and the results in reading and writing of first graders. In the study, there were 31 hearing-impaired children and 25…

This intervention study tested whether invented spelling plays a causal role in learning to read. Three groups of kindergarten children (mean age = 5 years 7 months) participated in a 4-week intervention. Children in the invented-spelling group spelled words as best they could and received developmentally appropriate feedback. Children in the 2…