The purpose of the Teacher Prep Review is to guarantee teachers have expertise in reading instruction (as well as other essential areas NCTQ assesses) before being trusted to teach children to read. By regularly reviewing the reading coursework provided by nearly 700 elementary teacher preparation programs, the National Council on Teacher Quality…

Letter learning is nuanced, complex, and essential to the development of an effective literacy processing system. Forming and naming letters, rapidly differentiating between visually similar letters, and recognizing their sound correspondences are foundational to becoming a reader and writer. Indeed, control over letters affects monitoring,…

This article is a report of recent evidence on methods for teaching young and struggling readers to read words. Specifically, evidence comparing synthetic and analytic phonics instruction was reviewed as well as the benefit of instruction in encoding and morphological awareness. The evidence reviewed suggests that instruction in synthetic and…

This article argues that the phonics screening check, introduced in England in 2012, is not fit for purpose. It is a test of children's ability to decode words rather than an assessment of their reading skills. Whilst this assessment may, to some extent, support the needs of children who rely on phonemic decoding as a route to word recognition, it…

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.…

Spelling is influenced by implicit cues, but less is known about variability in this reliance. We assessed whether the influence of three implicit cues on Dutch past tense spelling was moderated by grade, literacy, and format. An Auditory infinitive, Written infinitive, and Picture+cloze format was completed by 68 third-graders and 47…

Knowing how to provide effective literacy instruction is important for all educators, but it is critically important for urban educators. This article is built on the assumption that deepening urban educators' understanding of the reading process will better equip them to facilitate students' reading development, and to diagnose and intervene if…

Teaching children to read is a complicated process. Children begin school at varying levels of ability, yet are all required to meet a set standard of achievement. It is up to teachers to assess each student, identify individual learning needs, and provide support. A motivating, literacy-rich program that includes whole-class, small-group, and…

Reading Recovery, a meaning-based reading program designed for young children at risk of reading failure, is widely implemented across the United States. We discuss the recent Reading Recovery $45 million four-year i3-funded scaleup study that was designed to "cover the expansion of Reading Recovery around the U.S." (May, Sirinides,…

This article describes and evaluates one residential school for the deaf and hard of hearing, Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf (ENCSD), and their experience in implementing the Fairview Learning program. The program consists of five components (Schimmel & Edwards, 2003). Two of the components--phonemic awareness and literature-based…

The "Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing"® program is designed to improve reading and spelling skills by teaching students the skills needed to decode and encode words and to identify individual sounds and blends in words. The WWC has updated its 2008 review of "Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing"® to include 16 new studies, two of which…

Developing phonological knowledge of students is believed to be beneficial to reading development. This paper reviews selected eight articles on the issue of phonological knowledge and reading development in both native and English as Second Language (ESL) context. In finding the trends and patterns across all eight articles, the content and…

The following article examines the beginnings of open distance learning and use of OER by the National University of Samoa Faculty of Education to address an identified national need for more teachers and to improve their quality. It highlights related challenges in the training of teachers and how different and new modes of learning are not…

I taught music in three schools where 10-40% of the student population spoke another language at home. I ran an all-select choir for Kindergarten, Primary, Junior and Intermediate students once per week. I was interested in answering the following questions: What impact might weekly rehearsals of an all-select choir have on language learning? How…

"Academy of READING"® is an online program that aims to improve students' reading skills using a structured and sequential approach to learning in five core areas--phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) identified 38 studies of "Academy of READING"® for adolescent…