In a quasi-experimental study, kindergarten teachers taught children mnemonic stories to orient the confusable letters "b" and "d." In the first week's stories, intervention teachers introduced the left-to-right sequence of features for these letters with "the bat hits the ball" and "a dime rolls up to a…

This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

Preschool children often confuse letters with their mirror images when they try to read and write. Mirror confusion seems to occur more often in line with the direction of script (e.g., left-to-right for the Latin alphabetic script), suggesting that the processing of letter orientation and text directionality may be interrelated in preliterate…

During the last decades, prevalence of pupils with Specific Learning Disorder, and more specifically with Dyslexia, is on the increase in Italian schools. It requires both researchers and teachers to investigate, adapt and adopt simplex teaching strategies. that may foster pupils learning process at primary schools by taking account of their…

In recent years, children's video viewing has shifted from television to online streaming platforms like YouTube. While such platforms include many educational videos for children, we know little about the educational value of the content in these videos. To understand the learning opportunities available to children when they watch videos online,…

In recent years, children's video viewing has shifted from television to online streaming platforms like YouTube. While such platforms include many educational videos for children, we know little about the educational value of the content in these videos. To understand the learning opportunities available to children when they watch videos online,…

Understanding the early literacy abilities of children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is essential for designing and testing methods of reading intervention focused on printed orthography. School-based professionals need assessments that measure word reading skills of students with heterogenous speech and physical…

This dissertation investigated whether specific music training components of pitch and rhythm had a differential effect on early literacy skills of phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and concept of word awareness. In addition, this study examined associations between musical aptitude and early literacy skills. The central element of this…

In elementary school, an important goal of reading instruction is to enable children to read most words automatically by sight so that they can focus on learning from and enjoying what they are reading. But becoming a strong reader takes several years. Parents and caregivers need to know if a child is making good progress in learning to read.…

Teachers' knowledge of literacy has gained considerable interest over the last three decades, largely with a focus on the basic language constructs of phonological awareness and phonics. Fewer studies, however, have focused on spelling. Given the close relationship between reading and spelling and the necessity of an explicit understanding of the…

Background: Learning to read is a complex process that involves phonological and orthographic processing abilities, broader language skills and cognitive processes across all writing systems. Although these components remain common, the pace of acquisition of phonological and orthographic processing and reading abilities differ across writing…

Background: Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children may experience difficulties in word decoding development. Aims: We aimed to compare and predict the incremental word decoding development in first grade in Dutch DHH and hearing children, as a function of kindergarten reading precursors. Methods and procedures: In this study, 25 DHH, and 41…

In this article, I illustrate how research from cognitive science and the science of reading can inform research on the science of reading instruction. This purpose is accomplished by focusing on four recently published randomized control trials of instruction designed to teach alphabet letters to 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 342) attending…

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 is the second in series of studies designed to test direct and conditional effects of embedded cognitive practice in phonics instruction. Students identified in winter of kindergarten with minimal alphabet knowledge were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: explicit phonics (Plain) (n = 28) or explicit phonics with embedded cognitive…