These are some websites that I have found to be very useful and interesting. If anyone has any other sites they would care to share, please email them to me and I can add them to this list sus@ihug.co.nz

Decodable Readers
Gilt Edge Publishing produces a series of beginning readers (Word-level readers)which allow teachers to teach all the key areas of reading using the same book. Many students need explicit instruction to apply their developing knowledge of phonics to decoding but most books make this difficult to teach because the decodability of the text is arbitrary. The Gilt Edge Word-level readers take the guesswork out of decoding by scaffolding phonics instruction into real books. The same book can be used to teach phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding skills, vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension and to build fluency. This unique series of readers can be used for classroom based instructional reading and independent reading. They are also ideal to accelerate the reading skills of students who are not making expected progress and students who are learning English as an additional language.

1. "Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science"
This is an excellent article that outlines what a good teacher of reading should know and be able to do. Well worth reading!

2. S.E.D.L
The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory provides an enormous amount of excellent information about issues related to reading for teachers. The Cognitive Foundations of Learning to Read is a particularly valuable section which explains exactly what children need to be able to do, to become efficient readers.

3. International Reading Association
The International Reading Association provides teachers with a wide range of articles, resources, journals and books. It can be accessed through:

4. Spelling Research
Professor Rebecca Treiman has been involved in research into spelling development for many years. Many of her papers are available online through the following link:

One paper I found particularly useful was Treiman, R. (1998). Why spelling? The benefits of incorporating spelling into beginning reading instruction. In J. L. Metsala & L.C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 289-313).Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.