The Teacher and the Classroom

There is a growing literature demonstrating that speech rhythm sensitivity is related to children's reading development, independent of phonological awareness. However, the precise nature of this relationship is less well understood, and further research is warranted to investigate whether speech rhythm sensitivity predicts the different components of reading over time. In this 1-year longitudinal study, 69 five- to 8-year-old English-speaking children completed a speech rhythm assessment at Time 1 along with other cognitive assessments and then completed a variety of reading assessments at Time 2 (1 year later). A series of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after controlling for individual differences in age, vocabulary, and phonological awareness, speech rhythm sensitivity was able to predict unique variance in word reading and the phrasing component of the reading fluency measure 1 year later. The findings emphasize the contribution of speech rhythm sensitivity in children's reading development, and the authors argue that speech rhythm sensitivity should now be included in current models of children's reading development.

The role of fingerspelling or manual alphabet for reading among deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals has been of great interest in research. What can decades of research on fingerspelling and reading among deaf individuals tell us about how fingerspelling aids deaf children's reading development? This scoping review was, therefore, undertaken to explore: (a) What is the relationship between fingerspelling and reading?, (b) In what ways do fingerspelling abilities promote reading skills?, and (c) What is known about using fingerspelling to teach reading? We identified 26 studies that were screened and summarized according to publication characteristics. The content and methods of these studies were briefly described. The results revealed a larger proportion of quantitative methods and ASL/English settings. A discussion and implications for future research are provided.

Metacognition, or being aware of how you process information, is important for younger readers to progress in reading. This study investigates how metacognition helps children's reading development. The approach examines areas of thinking such as self-awareness, considering actions, and looking back to uncover how metacognition contributes to good reading skills. Furthermore, the study seeks to evaluate how well metacognitive approaches increase the reading abilities of young learners. The researchers examined findings from studies and theoretical models connected to metacognition and proficiency in reading. The study aims to provide a broad overview of the subject. The study uses a narrative review approach, carefully reading recent literature on metacognition and reading development. It examines various studies that address the approaches and results of metacognitive treatments on the reading skills of young children. The synthesis of data from various research studies reveals what helps young people build metacognitive skills and improve their reading proficiency. It examines how these findings might guide educators and policymakers and suggests possible treatments and methods for inclusion in schools. This evidence highlights how using metacognition can completely change education and suggests including it in teaching to produce thoughtful and independent readers.

The purpose of this entry is to briefly describe a study for which mixed methods were best suited. This study examined the growth of two groups of preservice literacy teachers in their abilities to recognize salient features of children's reading development. Quantitative data were used to ascertain growth, while qualitative data were used to situate the learning experiences in which this growth occurred. A purely quantitative study could have revealed growth, but little would be known about how that growth occurred. A purely qualitative study could have provided a rich description of two different ways to implement case‐based instruction but would not provide information about the growth of the learners. A mixed design helped to account for both the growth of the learners and an understanding of the interventions experienced by each group of learners.

Are faster readers also better readers? : exploring the role of reading fluency in Chinese children's reading development

Introduction: Readability formulas are crucial for identifying suitable texts for children's reading development. Traditional formulas, however, are linear models designed for alphabetic languages and struggle with numerous predictors. Purpose: To develop advanced readability formulas for Chinese texts using machine-learning algorithms that can handle hundreds of predictors. It is also the first readability formula developed in Hong Kong. Method: The corpus comprised 723 texts from 72 Chinese language arts textbooks used in public primary schools. The study considered 274 linguistic features at the character, word, syntax, and discourse levels as predictor variables. The outcome variables were the publisher-assigned semester scale and the teacher-rated readability level. Fifteen combinations of linguistic features were trained using Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) algorithms. Model performance was evaluated by prediction accuracy and the mean absolute error between predicted and actual readability. For both publisher-assigned and teacher-rated readability, the all-level-feature-RF and character-level-feature-RF models performed the best. The top 10 predictive features of the two optimal models were analyzed. Results: Among the publisher-assigned and subjective readability measures, the all-RF and character-RF models performed the best. The feature importance analyses of these two optimal models highlight the significance of character learning sequences, character frequency, and word frequency in estimating text readability in the Chinese context of Hong Kong. In addition, the findings suggest that publishers might rely on diverse information sources to assign semesters, whereas teachers likely prefer to utilize indices that can be directly derived from the texts themselves to gauge readability levels. Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of character-level features, particularly the timing of a character's introduction in the textbook, in predicting text readability in the Hong Kong Chinese context.

Five-to-six-year-olds' abilities to detect and solve ambiguities in spoken language have been found to be a predictor of their later reading abilities in first-to-third grade. However, the origins of this relationship remain unclear. Success in ambiguity detection may be reflective of overall language attainment, which varies with socioeconomic status (SES) and is known to predict reading. Yet, it is also possible that children's ability to detect ambiguity is explained by domain-general cognitive control skills, which can also vary with SES and predict literacy attainment. In this cross-sectional study, we examined within the same children the contributions of overall language knowledge, SES, and cognitive control skills to their ability to detect ambiguities in speech. Five-to-six-year-old French-learning preschoolers (n=38) performed three different tasks: ambiguity detection, a cognitive control (Flanker/No-Go) task, and standard assessments of vocabulary and oral language comprehension in French (BSEDS). Years of maternal education after the end of high school were used as a proxy of family SES. Individual differences in the ability to detect ambiguity were strongly related to children's cognitive control abilities, as indexed by congruency effects in the Flanker task. No relations with SES or language assessment were observed. These results lend support to the idea that children's reading development may hinge upon their ability to deal effectively with temporary lexical, syntactic, and semantic ambiguities that pervade real-time sentence interpretation and that their ability to deal with representational conflict in speech is reflective of their domain-general cognitive control skills.

This study explores reading fluency among elementary school students considering language level and family income(low SES). Forty eight students from 1st to 3rd grades participated in two paragraph reading tasks. Half of the children were from low income family and half of the children had low lexical knowledge. Reading fluency as in the number of correctly read syllables per minute, the total error frequency and error types were used to compare group differences. There were significant differences in the number of correctly read syllables per minute between two income groups and two language groups. There was a significant difference between low income group and non-low income group in total number of errors only when children's lexical knowledge were low. There were no group differences in error types of repetition and omission. Substitution and insertion error seemed to reflect the total error pattern. These results imply the importance of early screening and early involvement for children with low lexical knowledge from low income family. Monitoring and early intervention will support these children's reading development.

Failure of resting-state frontal–occipital connectivity in linking visual perception with reading fluency in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

The extension project "Implementing STEAM Methodologies for Teaching Sustainable Cities through Robotics to Children in Upala Canton" promotes educational robotics as a tool for bridging technological gaps. However, regardless of the subject matter taught or the methodology employed, reading constitutes a fundamental pillar of children's education. Therefore, the objective of this article is to share the experience of conducting reading workshops and a literary event as strategies to stimulate reading among children in Upala Canton. The project was developed with the support of the Socio-Educational Management Unit, responsible for the Canton's Public Library. The library facilitated the dissemination and registration for the workshops. Captive audiences within selected schools in the impact districts, particularly in border areas, were also utilized. The workshops were participatory, employing various techniques to strengthen reading comprehension and fluency competencies, as well as vocabulary acquisition. Work specifically focused on scientific literature concerning environmental protection, wildlife, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ninety-minute workshops were delivered to groups of 25 children. As a result, competencies were strengthened in 798 children through the various activities. One of the most crucial aspects of fostering children's reading development is instilling a need to read. Consequently, if children successfully comprehend texts and derive enjoyment from them, this will reinforce independent reading habits. These habits will enable them to engage with literary experiences throughout their academic and personal development.

This paper reports on a preliminary investigation on a small scale of the way the schools programme ‘Look and Read’ is used and evaluated both by teachers and pupils. The research was carried out among a small group of primary schools in an outer London Borough and began by eliciting responses from individual teachers concerning their use and attitudes towards the programme. A more detailed comparison was then made between two schools; first in their use of ‘Look and Read’ and secondly amongst children themselves in an attempt to assess the impact of the programme. The paper concludes that although the programme has the potential for enhancing children's reading development, this potential is not being fully realised and teachers need to be more aware of educational TV as a valuable learning resource.

Children's Reading Development

Introduction This study evaluated the effects of a structured intervention protocol, grounded in systematic and multisensory phonics instruction, on reading development in children identified as showing risk signs for dyslexia through a multifactorial protocol. Methods Seventy-six preschool and early elementary students were classified into three risk levels (mild, moderate, significant) based on phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and short-term/working memory. The intervention consisted of four progressive cycles (28 sessions in total). Cycles I and II involved small-group preventive sessions targeting phonological awareness, oral language, and early literacy concepts, supported by phonics-based materials and multisensory activities. From Cycle III onward, students were divided into two support groups: Risk Level 1 (small-group prevention) and Risk Level 2 (individual intensive support). Literacy development was monitored at five timepoints (T1–T5). Analyses included chi-square tests ( χ 2 ), adjusted standardized residuals, Cramér’s V, and multinomial logistic regression. Results The intervention significantly increased the number of children achieving initial and consolidated literacy stages, with a reduction in those remaining at the pre-literacy stage. By T5, no significant differences remained between risk groups and the comparison group, indicating effectiveness of the intervention in promoting similar developmental trajectories. A small subset of students showed persistent difficulties, underscoring the need for ongoing individualized support. Differentiated response patterns across risk levels confirmed the predictive validity of the early identification protocol, demonstrating its utility for selecting children most in need of preventive and intensive intervention. Conclusion A structured multisensory and systematic phonics-based intervention applied to children identified through early risk identification effectively supported those at risk for dyslexia. Findings highlight the potential of preventive and intensive interventions to reduce literacy gaps and the importance of sustained individualized support for students with persistent challenges, offering practical implications for inclusive education policies in public schools.

Reading requires the correct identification of letters and letter positions within words. Selective attention is, therefore, required to select chunks of the text for sequential processing. Despite the extensive literature on visual attention, the well-known effects of spatial cues in simple perceptual tasks cannot inform us about the role of attention in a task as complex as reading. Here, we systematically manipulate spatial attention in a multi-letter processing task to understand the effects of spatial cues on letter encoding in typical adults. Overall, endogenous (voluntary) cue benefits were larger than exogenous (reflexive). We show that cue benefits are greater in the left than in the right visual field and larger for the most crowded letter positions. Endogenous valid cues reduced errors due to confusing letter positions more than misidentifications, specifically for the most crowded letter positions. Therefore, shifting endogenous attention along a line of text is likely an important mechanism to alleviate the effects of crowding on encoding letters within words. Our results help set the premise for constructing theories about how specific mechanisms of attention support reading development in children. Understanding the link between reading development and attention mechanisms has far-reaching implications for effectively addressing the needs of children with reading disabilities.

In this chapter, we use an example of panel data on the longitudinal development of reading in children to introduce the latent growth curve analysis. Latent growth modeling originates in a simple mapping of the standard multilevel model for change onto the general model available for covariance structure analysis (CSA). Here, we illustrate how the latent growth modeling approach can be enacted by using the CSA Y‐measurement model to contain the level‐1 individual growth model and the CSA structural model to contain the level‐2 model for interindividual differences in change. Because this mapping is possible, all fixed and random parameters in the multilevel model for change can be estimated by fitting the corresponding CSA model to data using standard structural equation modeling software (such as LISREL). Latent growth curve analysis is important because it capitalizes on the intrinsic flexibility of the general CSA model to test interesting and complex hypotheses about change, many of which are either more difficult or impossible to test using standard multilevel modeling approaches.