LDA Bulletin

The central theme of this issue is speech and print. The focus is on early literacy instruction and the concepts of speech.

The central theme of this issue is comprehension – one of the basic dimensions of the Simple View of Reading. Comprehension presents teachers with huge challenges in the classroom.

The theme of this issue of the Bulletin is Thinking about Learning. Stanislas Dehaene characterises human beings as not merely homo sapiens, the thinking species, but also homo docens – the species that teaches itself (Dehaene, 2020).

The theme of this issue of the LDA Bulletin is ‘learning struggles and resilience’. Our contributors include experienced academics, as well as teachers and school administrators who are writing from the chalk face.

This issue of the LDA Bulletin has reading fluency as its primary focus, with a keynote submission from Dr Jan Hasbrouck. She explains the concept of reading fluency and dispels some common misconceptions about the topic.

Tom Nicholson reflects on the challenges of writing, describes the simple view of writing, suggests the value of a checklist, and gives an overview of the articles in this special issue.

This issue of the Bulletin focuses particularly on issues relating to phonics, phonemic awareness and the use of the term dyslexia. These are core issues in how best to teach reading, monitor progress, and how best to support students.

This issue contains articles from the 2018 LDA Award recipients which covers explicit instruction, phonics and the teaching of reading and spelling.