To what extent do frameworks of reading development and the phonics screening check support the assessment of reading development in England?

The purpose of this article is to question the suitability of the phonics screening check in relation to models and theories of reading development. The article questions the appropriateness of the check by drawing on theoretical frameworks which underpin typical reading development. I examine the Simple View of Reading developed by Gough and Tunmer and Ehri’s model of reading development. The article argues that the assessment of children’s development in reading should be underpinned and informed by a developmental framework which identifies the sequential skills in reading development

The efficacy of orthographic rime, grapheme-phoneme correspondence, and implicit phonics approaches to teaching decoding skills

This study compared the efficacy of two decoding skill-based programs, one based on explicit orthographic rime and one on grapheme–phoneme correspondences, to a control group exposed to an implicit phonics program. Children in both explicit decoding programs performed consistently better than the control group in the accuracy with which they read and spelled words covered in the program. Only children in the grapheme–phoneme correspondence program consistently spelled transfer words better than children in the control group. In addition, children in the grapheme–phoneme correspondence group consistently read words more quickly than children in the control group. Children in both explicit decoding programs scored higher than the children in the control group on measures of reading comprehension and oral reading at posttest

Predictors of single word spelling in English-speaking children: a cross sectional study

Background: The study aimed to explore to what extent variables associated with lexical and sublexical spelling processes predicted single word spelling ability, and whether patterns of lexical and sublexical processes were different across ages. Methods: Beginning (mean age 7-years, N=144) and advanced (mean age 9-years, N=114) English-speaking spellers completed tasks associated with sublexical processing (phonological ability and phonological short-term memory), lexical processing (visual short-term memory, visual attention span), and factors known to predict spelling (e.g., rapid automatised naming). Results: Phonological ability, rapid automatised naming, visual short-term memory and visual attention span were significant predictors of spelling accuracy for beginning spellers, while for more advanced spellers, only visual attention span was a significant predictor. Conclusions: The findings suggested that for beginning spellers, both lexical and sublexical processes are important for single word spelling, but with increasing literacy experience, lexically related variables are more important

Orthographic learning in Spanish children: influence of previous semantic and phonological knowledge

This study was funded by Grant PSI2015-64174-P from the Spanish Government and sup-ported by the predoctoral grant BP14-038 from the Foundation for the Promotion of Ap-plied Scientific Research and Technology in Asturias (FICYT