School and language performance in children born with low birth weight.

Objectives: To identify the impact of birth weight on the development of metalinguistic skills and performance in reading, writing, and arithmetic in students aged 6 to 10 years, enrolled from the 1st to the 4th grade of Elementary School in public schools of the metropolitan region of São Paulo.

Methods: The concurrent cohort included 315 students. Birth weight was the exposure variable, and the outcomes were performance in receptive and expressive language, oral metalinguistic skills, and performance in writing, arithmetic, and reading.

Performance of students with and without reading difficulties on decoding tasks.

Purpose: To characterize the performance of students with and without reading difficulties in reading decoding tasks to investigate parameters that can facilitate reading assessment.

Methods: Forty-eight school children, from 7 to 10 years old, who attended 2nd to 4th of Elementary Schoolgrades were studied. Based on their teacher's information, the children were divided into two groups: without reading difficulty (WRDG) and with reading difficulty (RDG).