Early cognitive and home environmental predictors of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Turkish-speaking children

In this study, we aimed to determine the early cognitive and home environmental predictors of reading in Turkish-speaking children. A total of 362 children participated in the study. We monitored the children for 3 years and assessed the home environmental variables and cognitive skills in kindergarten, reading fluency at the end of the first grade, and reading comprehension at the end of the second grade. We found that home literacy environment and socioeconomic status predicted early literacy skills in kindergarten as they also predicted reading fluency and reading comprehension through early literacy in later years. In addition, we found that phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming predicted reading fluency, while language and verbal working memory predicted reading comprehension. The results of the study showed us that it is important to consider reading and reading comprehension in Turkish-speaking children holistically, together with cognitive skills and home environmental variables.     

Re-reading the reading lesson: episodes in the history of reading pedagogy

Reading pedagogy is constantly an object of discussion and debate in contemporary policy and practice but is rarely a matter for historical inquiry. This paper reports from a recent study of the history of reading pedagogy in Australia and beyond. It focuses on a recurring figure in the historical record—the ‘reading lesson’. Presented as a distinctive trope, the reading lesson is traced in its regularity in and through the discourse of reading pedagogy, starting in 1930s Australia and moving back into 19th-century Europe, and with specific reference to the UK and the USA. Teaching reading is expressly identified as a moral project—something that, it can be argued, clearly continues into the present.     

Exploring how children with reading difficulties respond to instructional supports in literacy games and the role of prior knowledge

Digital literacy games can be beneficial for children with reading difficulties as a supplement to classroom instruction and an important feature of these games are the instructional supports, such as feedback. To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge. However, there is limited research around the relationship between prior knowledge, instruction and feedback in the context of learning games. This paper presents an empirical study exploring the influence of prior knowledge on response to feedback, in two conditions: with or without instruction. Thirty-six primary children (age 8–11) with reading difficulties participated: each child was assessed for their prior knowledge of two suffix types—noun and adjective suffixes. They subsequently received additional instruction for one suffix type and then played two rounds of a literacy game—one round for each suffix type. Our analysis shows that prior knowledge predicted initial success rates and performance after a verbal hint differently, depending on whether instruction was provided. These results are discussed with regards to learning game feedback design and the impact on different types of knowledge involved in gameplay, as well as other game design elements that might support knowledge building during gameplay.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Instructional supports, such as elaborative feedback, are a key feature of learning games.
• To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge.
• Prior knowledge is an important moderator to consider in the context of elaborative feedback.

What this paper adds

• Providing additional instruction (eg, pre-training) may act as a knowledge enhancer building on children's existing disciplinary expertise, whereas the inclusion of elaborative feedback (eg, a hint) could be seen as a knowledge equaliser enabling children regardless of their prior knowledge to use the pre-training within their gameplay.
• Highlights the importance of children's preferred learning strategies within the design of pre-training and feedback to ensure children are able to use the instructional support provided within the game.
• Possible implications for pre-training and feedback design within literacy games, as well as highlighting areas for further research.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Pre-training for literacy games should highlight key features of the learning content and explicitly make connections with the target learning objective as well as elaborative feedback.
• Pre-training should be combined with different types of in-game feedback for different types of learners (eg, level of prior knowledge) or depending on the type of knowledge that designers want to build (eg, metalinguistic vs. epilinguistic).
• Modality, content and timing of the feedback should be considered carefully to match the specific needs of the intended target audience and the interaction between them given the primary goal of the game.

     

手语研究与聋人康复和聋校教学

手语是聋人交流的主要工具 ,尽管它比口语抽象程度要差 ,但与其它交流方式如笔谈或读唇相比要方便的多。由于聋人普遍使用手语 ,我们不能忽视它在聋人康复中的重大意义。近年来 ,聋人教育体系正在逐步确立和完善 ,并且已经延伸到了高等教育阶段。但是在有关聋人教学的方面 ,仍存在许多困难 ,例如手语研究滞后 ,这都会影响教育效果和聋生的发展。因此我们必须努力去改革和发展中国手语     

聋人沟通模式与聋校语文教学法评说

沟通问题是聋教育的核心问题,聋教育史上长期争论不休的问题是关于何种沟通模式对聋人发展最有效。不同沟通模式对一线聋教育工作者而言较多的只是运用,而较少关注不同沟通模式的理论依据,也较少接受过有关聋人沟通模式理论的系统培训。通过将历史上出现过的四种聋人沟通模式逐一介绍,并把学者对这些模式的评价进行阐释,最后,对未来聋人沟通模式做了展望,以期从新的视角重新审视过往的评说。     

Visions for literacy: parents’ aspirations for reading in children with Down syndrome

Although children with Down syndrome (DS) can learn to read, few studies have explored parental perspectives on the reading development of this group of children. This article, written by Leila Ricci and Anna Osipova, from California State University, explores visions and expectations regarding reading held by parents of children with Down syndrome in the US. Parents of 50 children with DS (aged three to 13 years) completed a survey about their children's interest in reading and responded to open‐ended questions inquiring about their views on their children's reading development. A majority of parents in this study described their children's positive attitude toward reading, stated their reading‐related goals for their children, defined their children's relative strengths in reading, and shared strategies used in the home to promote literacy in this population. Parents pay close attention to and have high expectations for their children's reading achievement, and thereby would benefit from partnerships with informed educators willing and capable of teaching reading to children with DS.     

Supplemental reading strategy instruction for adolescents: A randomized trial and follow-up study

In this study, the authors examine the impact of a yearlong supplemental reading course involving daily instruction in the learning strategies curriculum on lower achieving adolescent students' reading achievement and motivation. Using a multiple-cohort randomized treatment-control group design over 4 years, they compared achievement and motivation outcomes for 605 sixth-grade students who participated in the intervention with 530 students who did not participate and 593 ninth-grade students who participated in the intervention with 535 students who did not participate. Results indicated significant impacts of the intervention on reading achievement for ninth-grade students but not for sixth-grade students. Significant impacts on reading motivation were found for both sixth- and ninth-grade students. An exploratory follow-up study indicated potential benefits of a second year of intervention for sixth-grade students who are still low achieving after 1 year of intervention.     

Children with autism and picture books: extending the reading experiences of autistic learners of primary age

Autistic learners master visual and spatial abilities; they use visual language to organise, understand and give meaning to the world. Although they might struggle with verbal skills, they have an associative way of thinking. Taking into consideration the characteristics of seven autistic pupils, the aim of this paper was to identify the potential of picture books in relation to autistic readers in order to explain why picture books can be supportive tools for improving verbal and social communication skills. The findings, based on a qualitative case study and a reader response framework, show that picture books help children with autism develop social and communication skills as well as foster imagination. Their written outcomes clearly showed children's need to tell stories.     

基于英文绘本的儿童英语阅读教学策略建构

语言学习依赖于大量的阅读,儿童只有"培养广泛的阅读兴趣,扩大阅读面,增加阅读量,多读书,读好书,好读书,读整本的书",他们的语言能力才会得到长足的发展。目前我们儿童英语学习低效的原因也和缺少阅读、缺少语言环境有关。近年来,笔者在教学中倡导开展英文绘本阅读,扩大儿童的英语阅读量,让儿童尽可能多地接触原汁原味的英语,这无疑是提升儿童英语水平的一条有效途径。     

Relationship between second grade oral reading fluency and third grade reading

Oral reading fluency is a critical feature and outcome of early literacy instruction and it has amassed great attention as a powerful predictor of success at all levels of schooling. We examined relationships between second grade oral reading fluency scores and third grade end-of-grade reading achievement scores for students (N = 9562) in a large school district in the United States. Stakeholder interviews were also conducted. In our model, oral reading fluency and reading comprehension scores were moderately correlated; oral reading fluency was the strongest predictor of subsequent achievement, followed by ethnicity; growth on oral reading fluency was not strongly associated with end-of-grade performance; and greater than 90% of students classified as ‘at risk’ on benchmark assessments performed poorly on third grade assessments. Stakeholders believed that oral reading fluency testing was not necessary above selected levels of proficiency. We discuss implications of our findings for future research and practice.     

Tracing reading to the dark side: investigating the policy producing reading and readers in detention homes

ABSTRACT

Both inside and outside educational settings, reading literature is emphasized as something good, perhaps even something that makes us better people. This paper aims to open the ‘black-boxed’ conception of reading by studying how reading and (non)readers are conceptualized in relation to young people taken into custody. I examine a policy document describing a reading project in detention homes for young people as a case in which reading is perceived as having specific effects. Actor-network theory is used as a methodological approach to call attention to the way ideas, values, and knowledge about educational content are produced. The analysis shows that the seemingly coherent policy document produces radically different versions of what reading is and who the readers and non-readers are. I conclude that conceptualizations of reading and literacy always involve the creation of ‘a dark side of reading’; the strong construction of ‘reading as doing good’ has marginalizing effects.     

Maternal mediation in book reading, home literacy environment, and children’s emergent literacy: a comparison between two social groups

The researchers addressed two questions: (1) Does maternal reading mediation and family home literacy environment (HLE) relate to children’s emergent literacy (EL) level? and (2) Do the relationships among these variables differ as a function of socioeconomic strata (SES) level. A total of 94 5–6-year-old children, 47 from low SES (LSES) and 47 from high (HSES) families, and their mothers participated. Mother–child interactions while reading an unfamiliar book were videotaped and their verbal expressions were coded for extracting maternal mediation level. Children’s independent EL level was assessed prior to the interaction. Compared with the LSES group, HSES children showed higher EL levels and their homes had a richer literacy environment. Maternal mediation level differed by SES: LSES mothers paraphrased text more often; HSES mothers’ higher mediation level included a discussion of the written system and making connections beyond the text. In the HSES group, maternal mediation level and HLE related to children’s EL; no such relationships appeared in the LSES group. Results are discussed in terms of children’s socio-economic background and their reading experiences. Implications for researchers and educational practices about the relationships between children’s literacy development, SES, HLE, and parental mediation are discussed.     

Executive functioning and word reading in Hong Kong Chinese children: A 1-year longitudinal perspective

This study examined the bidirectionality between kindergarten children's executive functioning (EF) and word reading across two time points. Participants were 523 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking children (mean age at Time 2 = 64.59 months; 52.9% male) and their parents. At Time 1, children were administered the measures of EF skills: inhibitory control, attention shifting, working memory and Chinese word reading. They were reassessed with these measures at Time 2 one year later. Results from the cross-lagged panel model revealed that, controlling for child age, gender and parental education levels, children's word reading at Time 1 was significantly predictive of their working memory at Time 2, but that the three EF skills at Time 1 were not predictive of word reading at Time 2. These findings underscored the role of early word reading in promoting children's working memory.     

读图时代书籍装帧中的版式设计

从读图时代的到来,结合当代版式设计的发展趋势,对未来书装中版式设计的发展方向进行预测。基于给版式设计注入新活力的自由式和反阅读式两种趋势的分析表明,不管时代怎样发展,先锋艺术总是只合少数人的胃口,而书籍的主要用途是传达信息、阐明道理,因此不论哪类书籍,其版式设计都应与书籍本身的特点相吻合,不能为形式而形式。     

Raising the reading skills of secondary-age students with severe and persistent reading difficulties: evaluation of the efficacy and implementation of a phonics-based intervention programme

The importance of reading skills to academic achievement, job acquisition and future success is well documented. Most of the research on reading interventions focuses on children in primary schools but many children start secondary school with very poor reading skills and schools require evidence-based interventions to support these children. The aims of this study were (i) to explore the efficacy of a phonics-based reading intervention programme, Toe By Toe, among secondary age students with severe reading difficulties and (ii) to examine perceived barriers to implementing this intervention programme. Results showed the intervention brought about a statistically significant improvement in the students’ decoding and word reading skills. Interviews with staff and students indicated a wide range of positive responses to the intervention and some key barriers to implementation. This study adds to the evidence base for the use of reading interventions in secondary schools to support students with severe reading difficulties.     

Synthetic phonics and the teaching of reading: the debate surrounding England's ‘Rose Report’

The Rose Report, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Education for England, recommended in March 2006 that early reading instruction must include synthetic phonics. This paper evaluates the extent to which research evidence supports this recommendation. In particular, a review of international research into the teaching of early reading shows that the Rose Report's main recommendation on synthetic phonics contradicts the powerful body of evidence accumulated over the last 30 years. In this paper it is argued that action already taken by the UK government to change the National Curriculum in line with the Rose Report's recommendations represents a change in pedagogy not justified by research.     

Exploring the role of parents in supporting recreational book reading beyond primary school

Levels of aliteracy have been found to rise in adolescence, and this article explores the potential influence of parents on this trend. The views of adolescent students who took part in semi‐structured interviews for the West Australian Study in Adolescent Book Reading (WASABR) provide insight into how parental support may change in the adolescent years. Student perspectives support earlier findings that there is an expiration of parental encouragement in many cases, though this sometimes occurs as children are avid readers and thus the support is no longer deemed necessary. The experiences of students with parents who provided continued encouragement into adolescence are examined, with consistent characteristics emerging from the qualitative data. The article identifies optimal mechanisms through which parents can play an important role in supporting their children's recreational book reading into adolescence.