Reading Intervention

How to Teach Your Child Vocabulary

In K-12 schools, literacy and family engagement play pivotal roles in shaping proficient readers. Phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension form the core of a child's literacy journey. Family engagement amplifies learning by involving parents in reading activities, benefiting English Language Learners and promoting multi-generational learning. Utilizing family literacy software fosters Interactive Family Literacy, ensuring accessibility and diverse resources. Parent engagement in children's reading skills not only combats illiteracy but also strengthens the home-school connection. This collaborative approach, emphasizing reading skills through family involvement, cultivates a supportive environment crucial for enhancing lifelong reading abilities and empowering students for academic success.

Case Study

For year, Sheila Jefferson, the principal of an elementary school in South Carolina, had been near her wits end. Before the pandemic, only 31% of her students were proficient readers.While some of the students in her school had completely disappeared when she had to close her doors and go online, the parents and other nearby relatives of most of the students had stepped up to help their students participate. But after the pandemic, the reading scores were even worse.

When she sent out a survey, some parents had asked how they could help even more. This kind of family engagement is the dream of every educator. How could she build on parent interest to create even more engagement in her school? In her case, the answer was in a new kind of literacy software for families. Instead of providing something for students to do when their parents are busy, it provides things for parents to do with their children when they have time. It also provides parent videos to help them talk about the software with their students. Once the students understand how to do each learning activity, they continue to do it on their own until they master its skill. Even better, the parents learn with their children since in Sheila’s neighborhood, few of the parents were fully literate themselves. Some had even logged in after their students went to bed to do the adult version of the learning activities. The summer students were showing clear signs of pre-reading and reading skill development. The program was working!

Sheila saw three groups of families through the software’s reports: the disengaged, the too busy’s, and the re-engaged. The disengaged never logged in. But, as her emails and texts about the software kept going out, their numbers were dropping. The too busy’s complained that teaching their students was her job, not their job. That led to some difficult conversations, but they were important conversations that gave her an opportunity to convince parents that they had to take an active role if their students were going to succeed. The growing group was the re-engaged. She could see in the software reports that they were logging in with their students almost every day! And their students were the ones who were thriving. She couldn’t wait to share the data with her funding agency. The students in re-engaged families were learning faster than ever. Now, Sheila had a plan: convince every parent, grandparent, aunt and uncle in her students’ families to spend 5 minutes a day on the software with their students.

The Research

FIn general, the large amount of research on the subject of student agency shows that “the degree to which students learn how to control their own learning … is highly related to outcomes.” Furthermore, for computer-aided instruction, “when the student is in ‘control’ over his or her learning … then the effects were greater than when the teacher was in ‘control’ over these dimensions of learning.” Students who feel that they are in control of their learning are more highly motivated to do the often difficult work of acquiring a new skill like reading.

FAnd what about algorithms? Computer-assisted instruction is one of the many interventions studied by researcher John Hattie who found that students who use algorithmically-controlled software see no benefit above students who don’t!

FWe shouldn’t be surprised. The algorithms used are rarely sophisticated enough to account for the different learning pathways of real students. As Richard Culatta says, “a model where a student is simply clicking through digital content at their own pace does not meet the criteria for personalized learning.” Even “Individualized Instruction” programs based on student-response algorithms do not provide a truly personalized learning experience, and as shown by Hattie’s analysis if the research, do not contribute in a meaningful way to learning.

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