Reading LINK - Additional Information

Reading LINK is a program which has several key components which numerous peer-reviewed research supports as effective:

• Teaching phonics - the sounds of the letters and consonants not just the names. See reference 1 below.
• Decoding - the use of syllables, vowels and consonants to make words.
• Vocabulary - the meaning of the words is taught and spelling practice to build a word bank. See reference 2 below.
• Oral use of the word and the sentence builds oral skills. See reference 4 below.
• Mastery - automaticity is achieved through time trials which commits the word and meaning to long term memory. See reference 3 below.
• Skills are practised to decode unknown words and build a skill in seeing unknown words and not guessing but decoding the words.
• Literacy and self-esteem are directly linked. See reference 5 below.

References and support research:

1. General phonics instruction as opposed to other reading instructional frameworks - Stahl, S. A. (1998). TEACHING CHILDREN WITH READING PROBLEMS TO DECODE: PHONICS AND “NOT‐PHONICS” INSTRUCTION. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 14(2), 165–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057356980140203
2. Ediger, Marlow. "Reading and Vocabulary Development." (1998).
3. Samuels, S. Jay. “Decoding and Automaticity: Helping Poor Readers Become Automatic at Word Recognition.” The Reading Teacher 41, no. 8 (1988): 756–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20199918.
4. Lervåg, Arne, Charles Hulme, and Monica Melby‐Lervåg. "Unpicking the developmental relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension: It's simple, but complex." Child development 89, no. 5 (2018): 1821-1838.
5. Brokamp, Saskia K., Antonia AM Houtveen, and Willem JCM van de Grift. "The relationship among students' reading performance, their classroom behaviour, and teacher skills." The Journal of Educational Research 112, no. 1 (2019): 1-11.
   Rowe, Kenneth J. "THE INFLUENCE OF READING ACTIVITY AT HOME ON STUDENTS'ATTITUDES TOWARDS READING, CLASSROOM ATTENTIVENESS AND READING ACHIEVEMENT: AN APPLICATION OF STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELLING." British Journal of Educational Psychology 61, no. 1 (1991): 19-35.
6. Christensen, Carol A. "Supporting students with reading difficulties within a whole school approach to literacy." Australian Journal of Dyslexia and Other Learning Disabilities 4 (2009): 3-14.
7. Christensen, Carol A., and Judith A. Bowey. "The efficacy of orthographic rime, grapheme–phoneme correspondence, and implicit phonics approaches to teaching decoding skills." Scientific Studies of Reading 9, no. 4 (2005): 327-349.
8. Christensen, Carol. "Decoding: Reading Link is Transforming the Teaching of Literacy." The Enquiries into teaching of literacy report. Network Educational, Australia (December, 2005) (2005).