French Immersion instruction has often focused on the development of oral language as the primary method of early literacy learning. Manitoba Education endorses this focus with its curricular emphasis on oral language acquisition before formal reading and writing instruction. This article examines the role of early years French immersion teachers…

Theory is an important element of literacy research. Research designs are informed by theories that explain what literacy is, how it develops, and how it should be taught and evaluated. Sociocultural theories emphasize the socially situated nature of literacies engagement and practices, whereas cognitive theories emphasize the underlying skills…

English Language Learners, such as my Hutterian students, struggle to overcome a variety of learning barriers. I examined a variety of instructional methods to determine what would help them. The first aspect I explored was how English Language Learners acquire literacy skills. I also investigated how to expand my students' background knowledge.…

An insufficient number of studies investigated the criteria for Arabic letter teaching in schools. Teachers play an integral role in understanding Arabic letters among young children, as it is essential for acquiring reading in the Arabic language early in life. The criteria for teaching letters in a current study include ease of pronunciation,…

This longitudinal ethnographic study involved a professional development project, Project Partnerships Achieve Literacy (Project PAL) in South Africa, with eight rural foundation phase teachers who taught Reception (kindergarten) through grade three (R-3). This Project was designed to support teachers in an under-resourced school as they learned…

The major goal of this study was to develop a game-like software application for phonological awareness training and to evaluate its role in improving phonological awareness skills at the kindergarten level, with the intention to eventually help reading acquisition in Turkish. The participants of the study came from two kindergarten classrooms in…

Literacy skills acquired during the first years of schooling have been recognised as the key to students' learning success. However, despite the continuing efforts by the New Zealand government and teachers there is still a large proportion of students who struggle to become literate. To address this issue the Ministry of Education funded selected…

The study examines the home literacy experiences, emergent literacy skills, and instructional experiences of a sample of Chilean kindergarten children (n = 126) and kindergarten families (n = 188) nested in 12 kindergarten classrooms from different socioeconomic status groups and types of schools. Descriptive information is given showing the level…

A model is proposed followed by a case study of collaborative project work between student teachers, teachers and English language learners in kindergarten and grade 1. As a model, service learning provides a framework for making explicit linkages between course-based, credit bearing academic content, the identified need of the community school,…

This teaching study tested whether guiding invented spelling through a Vygotskian approach to feedback would facilitate kindergarten children's entry into literacy more so than phonological awareness instruction. Participants included 40 kindergarteners whose early literacy skills were typical of literacy-rich classrooms, and who were receiving a…

Literate practice in the arts encompasses both aesthetics and creativity. It is also multimodal in nature and often collaborative. This article presents data collected from a small multi-age school, with children from Prep to Year 7, during their preparation for an end-of-year show. The children had studied the topics of conservation and…

In the institutionalization of the mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) in the country, several trainings were conducted introducing its unique features such as the use of the two-track method in teaching reading based on the frequency of the sounds of the first language (L1). This study attempted to find out how the accuracy track…

Grade 1 literacy skills of twin children in Australia (New South Wales) and the United States (Colorado) were explored in a genetically sensitive design (N = 319 pairs). Analyses indicated strong genetic influence on word and nonword identification, reading comprehension, and spelling. Rapid naming showed more modest, though reliable, genetic…