This article explores the underpinning assumptions about the changing definition and parameters of early reading that are contained in successive UK Departments for Education (DfE, DfES, DfEE) documentation since 1995 and in Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) reports and official blogs during the same…

Statistics relating to special schools indicate very low rates of basic literacy. However, there is very little information available regarding typical instruction in these settings and, therefore, no clear picture of the potential barriers precluding the improvement of reading skills in special schools. The current paper investigated current…

Based on Moje et al.'s (2004) conceptions of "third space theory", this article describes how five nursery-aged children created a "third space" between home and school, in order to find continuity between home and school constructions of reading. This article describes how the children used various aspects of their home…

At a literacy conference in December 1998, British Prime Minister Tony Blair defined phonics as "the skilled process of teaching children how the 44 sounds in the English language are represented by a letter or group of letters." But 4 years down the track, several recent reports from both national and international bodies continue to…

Considers Goswami's (1999) review of available evidence for and against the role of phonological rime awareness and analogy theory, concluding much of the evidence fits an alternative (non-rime) interpretation. Explores implications from this evidence for teaching and the role of rime analogy should play in the British National Curriculum. (SG)

The first of two studies examined the family literacy experiences of 10 young children in Britain. The second study traced the literacy progress of 66 first-year students, together with teachers' predictions and subsequent interventions. Findings indicated teachers' informal judgements did identify students with later problems but there was wide…

Presents three research claims that may have influenced the adoption of rhyme and analogy as part of the National Literacy Strategy. Notes that the three claims are: rhyme awareness is related to reading ability; rhyme awareness affects reading achievement; and rhyme awareness leads to the development of phoneme awareness. Concludes that not one…

Claims that even though teaching phonics is an effective method of reading instruction, the skills taught by phonics have little to do with the process of reading acquisition. Offers two methods of resolving the paradoxes generated by this situation. (NH)

Two studies investigated whether knowledge of specific letter-sound correspondences is a necessary precursor of children's ability to isolate phonemes in speech. In both studies, Czech and English children reliably isolated phonemes for which they did not know the corresponding letter. These data refute the idea that phoneme manipulation ability…

Suggests that bilingual children, because of their sensitivity to contexts for using their two languages, are likely to have a heightened awareness of the possible range of contexts for literacy and the range of communicative functions which written messages may convey. Also argues for an apporach to early literacy that acknowledges the importance…

This paper explains the government of the United Kingdom's (UK) National Literacy Strategy (NLS), established in 1997 by the incoming UK government to raise standards of literacy in English elementary school over a 5- to 10-year period. The paper summarizes how international research influenced the Strategy; reports on the impact of the NLS on the…

Using a personalized word association method, six children with persistent reading difficulties in two British elementary schools were instructed in recognizing 100 common words. All children made significant progress, with the most progress made by those who originally had the smallest sight vocabularies. Students who devised their own sentences…

Five-year-olds learned to associate three- or four-letter abbreviations, or cues, with spoken words, in which one of the letters in the cue corresponded to a phoneme that was articulated similarly or dissimilarly. Children found the phonetic cues easier to learn than control cues, suggesting that children are sensitive to the phonological and…

Reports on an exploratory study concerning the effectiveness of specific design features in talking book software. Considers how talking book software has the potential to complement current approaches to literacy instruction. Notes that electronic books can complement teaching approaches in infant classrooms and can positively affect both…

Contends that children need to learn phonic skills, not necessarily through early direct teaching, but through reading experience. Suggests using Paired Reading, which is validated by psycholinguistic reading theory and provides opportunities to learn to read from context and use innate syntactic and semantic knowledge. (SKC)