This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a non-profit, non-partisan news outlet focused on education. A growing number of researchers are...
The jury is in – maths anxiety is a problem, and it seems to be worse for girls.
Classroom-based reading fluency instruction takes many forms, but some methods are supported by more evidence than others.
Some simple comprehension strategies need only be taught for a short time. Others are more advanced and may require continued practice to yield...
The Reading Pledge is an evidence-based framework for schools to reduce the number of children who finish primary school unable to read proficiently....
Alfie Kohn has taken recent aim at cognitive load theory, but a closer inspection of his arguments shows they may not hold much water.
What happens to tests that no longer produce accurate scores?
ChatGPT is capable of producing original and high-quality essays with minimal effort.
The answer depends on what you are trying to learn about your students’ reading skills.
“Five years ago, there was almost nothing known about how educators can use research well to improve practice.” (Deliberately unattributed, 2024)
The ability to read opens up worlds. Reading enables children to progress into post-primary education and provides the basis for lifelong learning...
Recently, the Australian Capital Terrority (ACT) Government called for public submissions to inform their independent inquiry into the teaching of...
“And of course, the things they do not know must be taught to them by other people who do. The people around them must give their assistance....
MultiLit has recently released SpellEx, a comprehensive whole-class Tier 1 spelling program. The program aims to develop students’ understanding of...
I’m confronted with tens of thousands of words a day. Most of them are written words – something I didn’t really think about until I read a...
In the long-running reading wars, proponents of phonics have won. States across the United States of America, both liberal and conservative, are...
In this excerpt from ‘Need to know or nice to know … What is at the heart of the Science of Reading for teachers?’ (Buckingham, 2023), Jennifer...
If you do a Google image search for Response to Intervention (RtI) or Multi-tiered System of Supports (MTSS) you will return variations on the below...
John Carroll (1963/1989) proposed an innovative model of academic learning. According to Carroll, learning was a function of five variables: student...
Review of Snowling, M. J., Hulme, C., & Nation, K. (Eds.) (2022). The Science of Reading: A handbook. Wiley Blackwell. By Jennifer Buckingham
Position Statement from The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO)
It’s a truism in education to say that all children are different, and of course they are. Each child is a precious, unique individual with their own...
For a very long time now, I have been putting much thought to the questions of: Why teach mathematics? Why is it important for people’s lives? How...
If you step into a newly built school these days, chances are you will see classrooms that look very different to the classrooms most of us spent our...
Experts seeking distance from $1M report suggests issues run deep.
As greater consensus has been reached about how to teach children to decode and read words fluently, the focus of discussion among practitioners and...
In recent years, there has been a spike in the popularity of literacy programs that claim to train young students in attaining phonemic proficiency.
Recently, I started a new research project with four colleagues to investigate the writing choices made by primary and secondary school students who...
Need to promote students’ academic and social development? Storytelling is an efficient and powerful language activity that impacts reading, writing...
Nicola Bell ‘Fun and murder-y’ is a literary genre that I really enjoy, and I’ve been reading a lot of that type of book lately. One was The Bullet...
That depends on who you talk to. There is no agreed upon definition. Nor is there any official body like the Académie Française that can dictate a...
When I was director of the Centre for Child Study at the University of Birmingham in the early 1980s, we took delivery of our first ‘departmental...
Teacher question: Would you do an article about your thoughts on the recent report about Reading Recovery? By Tim Shanahan Download PDF The first...
Recently I was listening to an audiobook. Thanks to a dodgy Bluetooth connection, every couple of minutes a word was skipped. Most of the time, I...
After decades of neglect due to flawed whole language theory, the importance of explicit spelling instruction for reading comprehension is finally...
Graham, S. (2022). Educational Psychologist, 57(2), 55–72. The following is a summary of an article written by Professor Steve Graham of Arizona...
It’s been a busy few weeks with respect to discussion and debate about literacy in the public domain. I have been interviewed a number of times by...
By Tiffany Peltier Download PDF You may have heard of Dr Ehri’s theory of orthographic mapping, or the gluing of phonemes to graphemes within words...
In 2017, Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler published The Writing Revolution (TWR): a book outlining a new way of thinking about and teaching writing....
In Episode 5 of Emily Hanford’s podcast Sold a Story, there is a discussion about a question that comes up often: are benchmarking assessments and...
Good spelling is an extremely important skill for a literate person to possess. Accurate spelling assists readers to understand text they are reading...
By Kevin Wheldall, Joint Editor Download PDF During the Second World War, my (late) father served in Burma (now known as Myanmar) as a member of ‘the...
Teacher question: Teacher: I keep hearing about the science of reading and that I need to teach phonics (I’m a second-grade teacher). I’m okay with...
Recently two graduate teachers confided in me their feelings of guilt over using pre-prepared materials in their classrooms. They both really enjoyed...
There are few things more disheartening in my work life than having to spend precious time unpicking and rebutting the destructive work of high...
Teaching children to read is complex. There are many things that schools need to get right for their pupils to flourish as readers. However, from...
In 1961, the Ontario Human Rights Commission was formed to “prevent discrimination and to promote and advance human rights” in the Canadian province....
People sometimes raise the question of when the optimal time is for children to begin to learn to read. This is especially relevant for parents of...
In the pre-COVID days, when I did face-to-face training, I would usually ask folks if they remembered learning to read. 99.99% of them reported no...
Have you ever tried to change some aspect of your behaviour? To eat a healthier diet and/or lose weight? To exercise more? To have a better sleep...
Humans are unique among species in our ability to learn from each other. Many animals can mimic, but we have taken learning from others to the level...
Recent blog posts and articles in The Age have yet again stirred debates about the Reading Wars. We are writing this piece as a call for unity...
Homelessness remains a huge problem in Australia and an important contributing factor is low literacy levels. We interviewed 23 people who were...
Have you ever had a worm in your ear? Not a real live worm, of course (but commiserations if you have!). No, I mean what we commonly refer to as...
How do we 'follow the research' if there isn't any on a particular topic or practice? Tim Shanahan shares his thoughts and some practical advice for...
The MultiLit Research Unit has developed a series of assessment tools – curriculum-based measures (CBM) – that can be used to monitor the ongoing...
One of our main goals at The Learning Scientists is to communicate the science of learning. This means, for example, to write blog posts that...
Why do many thousands of New Zealand adults have very poor literacy? An adherence to the whole language method of teaching literacy over many decades...
Why principals looking for evidence-based methods will need to look beyond the pages of Clarity by Lyn Sharratt. By Jennifer Buckingham Download PDF...
Despite the promise to ‘improve clarity’, ‘declutter’ and remove ‘ambiguous’ content, the new draft curriculum has left teachers guessing when it...
There is a growing appetite in Australia for more evidence-based policymaking in education. In particular, policymakers are often called on to use...
Why thinking like a scout rather than a soldier when assessing new ideas on the teaching of phonemic awareness has made Mark Anderson change his...
This is an edited transcript of Noel Pearson’s speech at The Centre for Independent Studies event ‘Scaling up success in majority Indigenous schools’...
Research that informs our collective understanding of literacy development is not conducted within one field of science. This is tricky, because it...
Curriculum developers and teachers are grappling with the question of when to provide students with decodable and predictable texts, particularly...
There are very few exceptions to the statement ‘everyone can learn to read and write’. Learning to read is one of the most studied human skills. We...
Why using coloured paper and overlays might do more harm than good for students with reading difficulties. By James Murphy Download PDF I have been...
Earlier this year, Greg Ashman released his second book, The Power of Explicit Teaching and Direct Instruction. Those who are familiar with Ashman’s...
In the world of reading instruction, the terms ‘print-to-speech’ and ‘speech-to-print’ have become confusing and unnecessarily divisive. This is...
We know COVID-19 and its associated changes to our work and learning habits caused a marked increase in the use of technology. More surprising,...
In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne escapes from the titular jail by finally crawling through the sewage pipe, clawing his way, hand over...
The Arrowsmith Program has promised ‘brain training’ and increased ‘neuroplasticity’ since the 1970s. How has it responded to a wave of research...
The assessment of reading ability has a long history in educational psychology and special education. Burt, Schonell, Vernon, Neale, to name but a...
There have been some reports students fell behind during the remote learning period in 2020. By Jenny Gore, Andrew Miller, Jess Harris and Leanne...
The recent announcement that all NSW public schools will administer the Year 1 Phonics Check in 2021 has been widely welcomed. The Phonics Check has...
All parents will be familiar with the pleading question from the back seat on long (or sometimes not so long) car journeys, normally delivered in the...
While COVID-19 plays havoc with our minds, our healthcare workers and our economy, let’s just imagine that a COVID-19 Screening Check was available...
I received an interesting question from a third-grade teacher in Frankfort, Kentucky (US). She writes, “In my district we do not have a specific...
Jennifer Buckingham In my WWBR list this time is a book that has immediately become one of my favourite books ever. Frank Moorhouse’s Martini is a...
By Robyn Wheldall Download PDF My husband is a guinea pig My husband is a guinea pig and I’m very happy about it! This may sound like a strange thing...
What, exactly, are sight words? How are they created? How are they related to orthographic mapping? What phonemic awareness skills are necessary for...
The fabled ‘summer learning loss’ may not be cause for concern, according to the results of two new studies in New Zealand. By James Chapman Download...
I have the clearest memory of watching my two-year-old son exploring the back garden. A very thin twig was poking out from the hedge. He picked up a...
As a reading researcher, I spend a lot of time thinking about the factors that affect reading comprehension. As a person who reads, I’m also...
Using cognitive load theory, this article seeks to explain the failure of Reading Recovery as an effective instructional technique. By Ian Milligan...
This article, published in Frontiers for Young Minds, a journal which makes scientific articles accessible for younger audiences, discusses how...
The Reading Wars may be positioned as phonics vs. whole language, but within the phonics camp, there is still significant conflict about what...
Detective dramas are quite the rage, but you need look no further than the humble schoolbook for a mystery that even the most discerning sleuth would...
“I want to align my practice to the Science of Reading, but I don’t have support from my administration team or colleagues … what do I do?” “I am a...
Delivering effective instruction – or even just making the classroom run smoothly – is difficult when educators are struggling with behaviour issues....
By Kevin Wheldall Download PDF Out of sight but not out of mind A common misconception about dyslexia is that it is typically to do with distorted...
How hard is it not to read? Every morning I stand in front of the bathroom mirror waiting for my electric toothbrush to tell me when the required two...
The very first essay I wrote in my undergraduate linguistics course was a defence of the English spelling system. My argument – inasmuch as my callow...
Recently, the New York Times published an article on the front page about the teaching of reading. A friend posted in on Facebook saying “I won’t...
The Interim Report of the NSW Curriculum Review by Professor Geoff Masters AO was released on 22 October 2019. The K-12 school curriculum review was...
Countering some of the most common claims bandied about by opponents of phonics. By Timothy Shanahan Download PDF Recently, the Washington Post...
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut...
Over the school holidays, I’ve been reading some influential business books in preparation for a course I’m giving. By definition, these books were...
The proposal to introduce a phonics check – employed in schools in England towards the end of Year 1 – into Australian schools has created...