Effective instruction for persisting dyslexia in upper grades: Adding hope stories and computer coding to explicit literacy instruction

Abstract

Children in grades 4 to 6 (=14) who despite early intervention had persisting dyslexia (impaired word reading and spelling) were assessed before and after computerized reading and writing instruction aimed at subword, word, and syntax skills shown in four prior studies to be effective for treating dyslexia. During the 12 two-hour sessions once a week after school they first completed HAWK Letters in Motion© for manuscript and cursive handwriting, HAWK Words in Motion© for phonological, orthographic, and morphological coding for word reading and spelling, and HAWK Minds in Motion© for sentence reading comprehension and written sentence composing. A reading comprehension activity in which sentences were presented one word at a time or one added word at a time was introduced. Next, to instill hope they could overcome their struggles with reading and spelling, they read and discussed stories about struggles of Buckminister Fuller who overcame early disabilities to make important contributions to society. Finally, they engaged in the new Kokopelli's World (KW)©, blocks-based online lessons, to learn computer coding in introductory programming by creating stories in sentence blocks (Tanimoto and Thompson 2016). Participants improved significantly in hallmark word decoding and spelling deficits of dyslexia, three syntax skills (oral construction, listening comprehension, and written composing), reading comprehension (with decoding as covariate), handwriting, orthographic and morphological coding, orthographic loop, and inhibition (focused attention). They answered more reading comprehension questions correctly when they had read sentences presented one word at a time (eliminating both regressions out and regressions in during saccades) than when presented one added word at a time (eliminating only regressions out during saccades). Indicators of improved self-efficacy that they could learn to read and write were observed. Reminders to pay attention and stay on task needed before adding computer coding were not needed after computer coding was added.

Literacy Toy for Enhancement Phonological Awareness: A Longitudinal Study

“…Results found affirmed that its application has positive results since there were found statistically significant improvements in the phonological awareness between the pre and post-test. Results found in this investigation are concordant with the results found in previous research such as the one conducted by Thompson et al [ 18 ] and Gilakjani and Rahimy [ 19 ], who have reported that technological use improves the oral phoneme-grapheme decoding precision as well as reading rating, contributing to significant improvement in pronunciation learning; this allows to affirm that children with learning difficulties will be benefited with reading, pronunciation, phonological awareness and writing abilities learning through technological use.…”

Why Children With Dyslexia Struggle With Writing and How to Help Them

“…Difficulty with handwriting, particularly in the absence of word recognition or language comprehension difficulty, is sometimes called dysgraphia(Berninger et al, 2015;Thompson et al, 2018). However, researchers have not agreed on common measures for identifying this difficulty, and it is not clear whether dysgraphia includes cases where children have fine motor problems beyond handwriting.…”

Preservice Teacher Perceptions of Coding in Literacy Instruction

“…Discovering a possible connection between coding and literacy could promote computer science or computational thinking in the classroom and motivate children who struggle in literacy. This study builds on previous research in game-based learning (Gee, 2008;Papert, 1980) and literacy and coding instruction (Kidd, et al, 2014;Thompson, et al, 2018;Vee, 2017). It may also provide teachers with additional tools to consider how and when to integrate coding skills within their elementary level literacy curriculum where computer science instruction may be new to teachers or not perceived as appropriate, practical, or worthwhile to incorporate in their classrooms.…”

“…Gee (2013) offered a framework in understanding how game environments, such as those found in online coding apps Code.org and Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), assist in learning noting that video gaming itself is a form of literacy. He referred to a "good" game environment as one that enables and reinforces learning, active exploration, and player autonomy, which a coding app such as Scratch allows due to the open-ended nature and full user control (Hagge, 2017;Kafai & Burke, 2014;Thompson, et al, 2018). Table 1 provides a brief summary of this framework, featuring those principles most pertinent to the current study.…”

“…If it can be accepted that literacy refers to any process of decoding meaning through the use of symbols (Eulenberg, 1982;Gee, 2013;Hutchison, Nadolny, & Estapa, 2015;Thompson et al, 2018), then code, and therefore the games that are both created by it and teach its use, are also a form of literacy. Gee (2013) argued that when playing a game, learners must decode the design and produce new solutions, similar to the process of decoding letters and writing words.…”