Nicole Wilton is the program manager of the Community Music Education Program at the University of Saskatchewan. Huili Hong and Renee Rice Moran are assistant professors who teach literacy classes in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (CUAI) at East Tennessee State University. LaShay Jennings is a clinical instructor in CUAI who works with field-based student teachers. Ed Dwyer is a professor who teaches literacy classes in the same department. Nicole, Huili, Renee, LaShay and Ed have a great deal of interest in integrating artistic, social, and experiential strategies within instructional programs designed to enhance literacy achievement. According to these experts, students need to become physically, experientially, and emotionally as well as academically involved when learning sight words and in learning in general. Emphasis is placed on encouraging teachers and other instructional personnel to foster self-efficacy among their students through activities that generate success through products produced and learning experienced. Preparing a sturdy and attractive book focused on sight vocabulary in context is presented herein as a key strategy for both promoting self-efficacy and enhancing reading competence among students in the primary grades. Although the activity presented focuses on promoting sight word acquisition among primary grade readers, the strategies are adaptable to a wide variety of learning endeavours.

There are competing theories in the literature regarding the extent to which the translation of print to speech involves single or multiple routes. Regardless of the number of routes in a model, all models of reading must account for both sight vocabulary (SV) processing, which specializes in mapping whole-word representations, and phonetic decoding (PD) processing, which specializes in mapping sub-word representations. The purpose of the present work was to examine two hypotheses regarding the relationship between SV and PD: independence versus redundancy. Both behavioural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiments were conducted and the results supported the hypothesis that SV and PD are behaviourally and neurobiologically independent processes. Furthermore, in the interest of advancing all models of basic word recognition, the neurobiological representations of some of the sub-systems within SV and PD routes were explored and the contribution that particular brain regions make to the completion of naming particular stimuli was evaluated. Finally, basic and applied areas of research were integrated to demonstrate how diagnostic stimuli developed from basic reading research can inform us about impaired reading performance following traumatic brain injury.

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