Welcome to the Reading Research Recap!
I am Dr. Neena Saha, Research Advisor at MetaMetrics. My focus is bridging the research-practice gap so that you can access useful resources that support reading success, expand awareness of the latest reading research, and inform your teaching and learning strategies. This monthly compendium offers the most relevant and must-read research impacting the reading and learning landscape, including easy-to-view, digestible highlights. We want the data and findings to be as useful to you as possible, so please do connect with me with any ideas and comments for next month. Enjoy the latest Reading Research Recap!
📚 Deep Dive: Morphology Instruction and Children’s Books
Summer’s here and everyone is crazy busy, so I’ll keep this recap super short!
This month’s paper is all about morphology: Morphology in children’s books, and what it means for learning.
Background
A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word. English is a morpho-phonemic language and morphemes are important to understanding word meanings (vocabulary), which, in turn, is critical for comprehension.
Methods
The researchers analyzed morphological information (word parts like prefixes/suffixes) in 1,200 popular children’s books (for ages 7-16) in the UK to understand how children learn morphemes through reading experience.
Key Results
About half of words in children’s books are morphologically complex, but most complex words appear rarely and many affixes are difficult to detect without specialized knowledge – only a handful of common affixes (like un-, -ly, -er) are easily learnable from text.
Practical Implications
Current morphology instruction may be misaligned with children’s actual reading experience; educators should focus on teaching harder-to-detect affixes (especially Greek/Latin origin) rather than easily learned common ones, and instruction timing should coincide with when children encounter these morphemes in their reading:
Teachers should focus on ”… those affixes that appear in a limited number of distinct words and in combination with bound stems. Many of these affixes are of Greek or Latinate origin and attach to stems of the same origin (e.g., prefixes inter-, sub-, in-, de-, e-, ex-, a-, co-, and suffixes -ion, -al, -ate, -ance/-ence, -ant, -ic, -ity, -ify). These affixes are often found in complex words that are unlikely to be part of children’s oral vocabulary: examples include words like indelibly, extortionate, extemporise, palpitate, calumniate, inaugural, bifocal, ophthalmic, acerbic, perpetuity, assiduity, and quantify.”
“Explicit instruction on the meanings and functions of these morphemes could assist children in interpreting both the individual morphemes and the complex words they form.”
The authors point out that many of the above affixes are missing from popular morpheme lists, so make sure to check your lists!
Professional Development, Commentary, Policy, etc.
- Grappling With the Implementation of Reading Practices: Educators Crossing Boundaries in a Multi-School / University Research-Practice Partnership (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)
- Content analysis of state‑level review materials for K‑2 core literacy curricula
- An ideal phonics school’? Some reflections from consultancy
- Literacy in the Field: Preservice Teachers’ Professional Experience Perspectives
- Utilization of AI-aided vocabulary teaching in K-12: A case study
- Teacher agency and student diversity in reading education: What do Australian teachers think?
- Teacher Perceptions of the Arkansas Rise Initiative Regarding Student Performance and Teacher Training (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)
Foundational Reading Skills, Alphabetics, Decoding, Phonological Awareness, Fluency
- Building a Firm Foundation: Identifying the Most Effective Kindergarten to Second-Grade Literacy Instructional Practices That Lead to Third-Grade Reading Success (Dissertation, not yet peer-reviewed)
- Dog vs. Human: Impact on Reading Fluency (conference presentation, not yet peer-reviewed)
Comprehension, Vocabulary
- Summarizing expository text and the relationship to verbal ability and reading skills
- Listening Comprehension and Decoding as Indirect and Direct Predictors of Reading Comprehension in Grades 1, 2, and 3
- Does Teacher Talk Matter Too? A Meta-Analysis of Partial Correlations Between Teachers’ Language Practices and Children’s Language Development from Preschool to Third Grade
- An Evaluation of the Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI) in an Urban School District During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- How Much Should I Read? An Analysis of Word Learning Opportunities in Children’s Novels
- Motivating book reading during adolescence: qualitative insights from adolescents
- A Pilot Study Exploring Elementary School-Aged Children’s Knowledge of the Syntactic and Prosodic Functions of Punctuation
- Which social-emotional skills are most important for students’ learning and well-being? An international comparison among China, USA and Finland
- Effectiveness of neuromodulation with tDCS on developmental dyslexia: A randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical trial
- Development of a Multicomponent Reading and Writing Intervention in Grades 4-5
Other
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