Melissa Stalega

Melissa Stalega – melissa.stalega@uconn.edu 

Melissa V. Stalega is a Doctoral Fellow studying Special Education at the Neag School of Education at University of Connecticut. She specializes in reading difficulty, specifically word recognition, in early readers (PK – 1st). Some of her most recent research includes developing a reading intervention for struggling 3rd and 4th graders, standardized classroom observations, and systematic reviews of current reading programs including a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of phonological awareness instruction. She also has co-taught an explicit instruction course for undergraduate special education students and led a beginning reading course for UConn’s TCPCG track.

Publications:

Lyon, C. P., Fuchs, D., Stalega, M. V., & Kearns, D. M. (2023). Kindergarten Peer Assisted Learning Strategies. In Reading Intervention Case Studies for School Psychologists (pp. 64-81). Routledge.

Stalega, M.V., Kearns, D.M., Bourget, J., Bayer, N., & Hebert, M. (2023) Is phonological awareness only instruction helpful for reading?: a meta-analysis [manuscript in revision]. University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States.

Kearns, D.M., Lyon, C., Zagata, E., Stalega, M.V. & Kelley, S. (2022) Teaching Syllable Division to Facilitate Polysyllabic Word Reading: Current Research and Possible Alternatives. The Reading League, 3(2), 14.

Clemens, N. H., Solari, E., Kearns, D. M., Fien, H., Nelson, N. J., Stalega, M., Burns, M., Martin, K.S. & Hoeft, F. (2021). They say you can do phonemic awareness instruction “in the dark”, but should you? A critical evaluation of the trend toward advanced phonemic awareness training. https://psyarxiv.com/ajxbv/download?format=pdf