Effects of morphological awareness, naming speed, and phonological awareness on reading skills from Grade 3 to Grade 5

• We examine phonological awareness, naming speed, and morphological awareness as predictors of reading. • We test effects on various reading measures in Grades 3 and 5. • We find that developmental changes in the trajectories of these predictors account for additional variance in reading skills. • We show that these predictors account for changes in the trajectories of reading skills between Grades 3 and 5. This study examined the effects of phonological awareness, naming speed, and morphological awareness on reading achievement in 126 English-speaking Canadian children followed from Grade 3 to Grade 5. Reading measures included word reading accuracy, word reading speed, and passage comprehension in both grades as well as multi-morphemic word reading and text reading speed in Grade 5. After controlling for verbal and nonverbal ability, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that (a) all predictors contributed significantly to most reading measures in Grades 3 and 5 and longitudinally from Grade 3 to Grade 5; (b) changes in the trajectories of the three predictors across time contributed significantly to each of the reading outcomes; and (c) the three predictors contributed significantly to change in the trajectories of each of the reading measures. These results indicate continuing and pervasive roles for phonological awareness, naming speed, and morphological awareness over the later elementary school years, especially for morphological awareness in reading comprehension. We suggest that assessment and instruction include these underlying skills in the upper elementary grades to support students’ further reading development.