Performance of Australian children on the English Phonics Screening Check following systematic synthetic phonics instruction in the first two years of schooling

Wheldall, Kevin; Bell, Nicola; Wheldall, Robyn; Madelaine, Alison; Reynolds, Meree

doi:10.1080/19404158.2019.1635500

Cited by 2 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…A total of 137 children (64 females) from Year 1 classes in New South Wales participated in the present study. An in-depth analysis of the original sample’s PSC results ( n = 151) is available from Wheldall et al. (2019).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A summary of the PSC is provided below (see Wheldall et al., 2019, for a complete description). The 2018 English PSC (Standards & Testing Agency, 2018b) instructs examinees to read aloud 20 real words and 20 pseudowords from a stimulus booklet.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By the time they were administered the PSC, they had completed one year and three school terms of the whole-class InitiaLit program. Both InitiaLit-F and InitiaLit-1 programs comprise instruction in synthetic phonics, morphology, grammar, oral language comprehension and vocabulary (see Wheldall et al., 2019, for more information). Students who have participated in the InitiaLit program tend to show advanced pseudoword decoding skills relative to standardised norms (MultiLit, 2017, 2018).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On a smaller scale than what has previously been published in government-funded reports from South Australia (Government of South Australia, 2019; Hordacre et al., 2017) and England (Department for Education, 2018), Wheldall et al. (2019) investigated the PSC results of a Year 1 cohort who received whole-class systematic synthetic phonics instruction.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Use of early word-reading fluency measures to predict outcomes on the Phonics Screening Check

Bell¹,

Farrell-Whelan²,

Wheldall

2020

Australian Journal of Education

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Teachers in England and South Australia annually administer the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) to Year 1 students, with the purpose of identifying struggling readers. Students who do not meet the score threshold have not met the expected standard of word-decoding ability, meaning further support may be warranted. We sought to quantify the extent to which other early reading measures, such as the Wheldall Assessment of Reading Nonwords (WARN) and Wheldall Assessment of Reading Lists (WARL), predicted students’ likelihood of not meeting PSC expected standards. Predicting PSC outcomes, and thereby identifying struggling readers at the start of Year 1, has important implications for possible intervention strategies. Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic analyses were conducted to examine the longitudinal relationships between real-word and pseudoword predictors as measured by the WARL and WARN and PSC pass/fail outcomes. Students who scored lower on predictors were less likely to meet the PSC expected standards. Results indicate that the WARL and WARN could be used to identify students who will not meet PSC expected standards, facilitating earlier intervention where it is most critically required.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Use of early word-reading fluency measures to predict outcomes on the Phonics Screening Check

Bell¹,

Farrell-Whelan²,

Wheldall

2020

Australian Journal of Education

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“…These improvements in teacher education and professional learning would be supported by the use and interpretation of validated assessment tools to assist teachers to identify reading problems at the sub-component level. Education departments and governments can play a vital role by implementing a word-level reading task similar to the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE-2; Torgesen et al, 2012), such as the Phonics Screening Check, to assist teachers to identify and address decoding weaknesses (Wheldall, Bell, Wheldall, Madelaine, & Reynolds, 2019), and by commissioning research to independently assess the effectiveness of common reading practices and promoting greater use of those found to be effective.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A longitudinal analysis of the alignment between children’s early word-level reading trajectories, teachers’ reported concerns and supports provided

et al. 2020

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In this longitudinal study, the word-level reading trajectories of 118 children were tracked alongside teachers' reported concerns and types of support provided through Grades 1, 2 and 3. Results show a significant decline in composite scores relative to age norms over time, with children achieving significantly lower in phonemic decoding than word recognition at the subtest level. Five group trajectories were identified: children who achieved average or above average scores across all 3 years (n = 64), children who consistently bordered on average (n = 11), children who achieved below average in Grade 1 but who then achieved average or above in Grade 2 or Grade 3 (n = 7), children who achieved average or above in Grade 1 but then declined to below average in Grade 2 or Grade 3 (n = 10), and children who achieved below average across all 3 years (n = 26). Appropriately, teachers' concerns were highest for students in the groups that improved, declined or remained persistently below average. However, analysis of the focus of teachers' concerns and the supports they said were provided to the children in these three groups suggests that teachers are not always accurate in their interpretation of children's presenting characteristics, resulting in the misalignment of support provision.

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Performance of Australian children on the English Phonics Screening Check following systematic synthetic phonics instruction in the first two years of schooling

Cited by 2 publications

References 12 publications

Use of early word-reading fluency measures to predict outcomes on the Phonics Screening Check

Use of early word-reading fluency measures to predict outcomes on the Phonics Screening Check

A longitudinal analysis of the alignment between children’s early word-level reading trajectories, teachers’ reported concerns and supports provided

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