Interest in the cognitive precursors of literacy has been increasing in recent years since reading and writing are essential components of functional learning in the first years of schooling and of school success in later educational stages. However, it can be observed that while studies on the relationship between cognitive variables and reading…

Critical Language Awareness (CLA) instruction can and should be a part of K-12 education. This study reports on a CLA unit taught to Spanish-English bilingual 5th graders enrolled in a dual language bilingual classroom in the southwest U.S. Scores from a pretest and three posttests administered throughout the school year were compared to peer…

In this Action & Learning article, we describe the connections between the popular Spanish nursery song "Los pollitos dicen" (The Little Chicks Say) and Aesop's fable's "The Fox and Hen" with the literacy teaching of bilingual Latinx students. In this metaphor, the bilingual teachers represent the Mamá Gallina (Mother Hen)…

This article presents an ethnographic case study of how deficit beliefs shape the ways teachers call upon Latinx emergent bilinguals and families to engage in the schooling process. Informed by theories of language socialization, this study examines how one second-grade bilingual teacher called upon students and families of Mexican origin to…

Purpose: Effects related to literacy acquisition have been observed at different levels of speech processing. This study investigated the link between orthographic knowledge and children's perception and production of specific speech sounds. Method: Sixty Spanish-speaking second graders, differing in their phonological decoding skills, completed a…

Background: Upper elementary grade students encounter increasingly complex texts with abundant morphologically complex words. Despite the positive effects of morphology-based vocabulary instruction, emergent bilinguals with limited word reading skills may need additional support. Methods: This study investigated the effects of morphological…

What started as a social media based movement, the viral hashtag #blackgirlmagic has transcended into a way of being, and seeing Black girls and women. The essence and prevalence of #blackgirlmagic continues to defy all odds and perceptions in sports, society, and other social spaces where Black girls have been rendered invisible, including in the…

This study explored the instructional potential of bilingual picturebooks for building word consciousness in bilingual elementary students. Word consciousness refers to knowledge about words as well as interest in and enthusiasm for learning new words. This disposition helps students build their vocabularies and learn more words from talk and…

Shifting demographics in K-12 schools have increased Spanish-speaking Multi-Language Learners' (MLLs') enrollment across the United States. While literacy variations between MLLs and proficient English speakers have been studied predominantly with upper elementary students, there remains a need for more exploration among early elementary…

In Spanish, the plural form in plural dominant frequency pairs, like "diente/dientes" [tooth/teeth], occurs more frequently than the corresponding singular form. On the other hand, for the singular dominant frequency pairs such as "cometa/cometas" [kite/kites], the singular form is more common than the plural. The recognition…

Letter knowledge and word identification are key skills for reading and spelling. Letter knowledge facilitates the application of sublexical letter-sound mappings to decode words. With reading experience, word identification becomes a key lexical skill to support decoding. In transparent orthographies, however, letter knowledge might be an…

This paper focuses on vocabulary development in oral language productions of three elementary school-age sibling pairs growing up in a trilingual setting. This longitudinal study describes the development of the children's narrative competence over three years. The corpus analysed consists of retellings of animated films. The contribution deals…

This research aims to study the psycho-social impact of video games on K12 students. For this, a probabilistic topic modelling analysis method based on text mining approach has been performed. This process is based on nodes' connectivity and it has been developed through K Means approach; by launching the Jenks-Breaks algorithm. The sex…

This study examined Spanish spelling errors among 166 native Spanish-speaking students from Kindergarten to Grade 3 based on a spelling-to-diction task. Fifteen types of spelling errors were analyzed in a latent class analysis. Results suggested three phases of spellers: Phase 1 students had a high chance of committing almost all types of errors.…

Background/Context: Literacy skills are critical to understanding information presented in written or oral formats and communicating effectively with others. These skills are important to students' success in school and later in life, including improved individual health and economic outcomes, increased civic engagement, and enhanced community…