The Adventures of Amaru: Integrating Learning Tasks Into a Digital Game for Teaching Children in Early Phases of Literacy

Souza, Gilberto Nerino de; Brito, Yvan Pereira dos Santos; Tsutsumi, Myenne Mieko Ayres; Marques, Leonardo Brandão; Goulart, Paulo Roney Kilpp; Monteiro, Dionne Cavalcante; Santana, Ádamo Lima de

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02531

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Of course this may change as technology evolves and learners adapt to the new technologies. Importantly, technology can be used as a beneficial tool in scaffolding the learning of struggling readers (de Souza et al, 2018;Lee, 2016Lee, , 2019O'Brien, Habib & Onnis, 2019).…”

Section: Implications and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Read in Multilingual Malaysia: A Focus on Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese

Winskel

2020

gema

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Learning to read fluently is an extremely important skill for all children to acquire. The current article focuses on learning to read in the most widely spoken languages of Malaysia, namely, the national language Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese. These three unrelated languages have quite distinct writing systems. Bahasa Melayu uses alphabetic Rumi or Roman script, Tamil has an alphasyllabary, and Chinese has a logographic or morphosyllabic writing system. Moreover, many of these children are learning to speak and read in more than one language. When we consider the task of these biscriptal learners, a complex picture emerges, as they may have to learn to map different phonological and orthographic systems. Furthermore, many children in Malaysia have the additional challenge of learning English as a second language. First, a brief review of the characteristics of the three main languages and their orthographies is given. Subsequently, research on phonological awareness, an important skill associated with success in reading, is reviewed. Initially, phonological awareness and reading in single language studies is examined prior to reviewing some research on bilingual learners. As these three languages have rich morphological systems, we will also briefly examine some research on morphological awareness and reading. A review of the literature reveals that children who speak a language with a similar orthography to a second language may have some advantage when learning to read that second language in comparison to children whose first and second languages and orthographies are unrelated.

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Section: Implications and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Read in Multilingual Malaysia: A Focus on Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese

Winskel

2020

gema

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“…As a means of scaffolding learning in the classroom, technological tools provide limitless practice [26][27][28] that can be individualized [24,29,30] to optimize for an individual reader's strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, modern computational tools utilizing speech recognition and synthesis application programming interfaces (APIs), allow for embedded tools to be provided in real-time for any given text.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annotating digital text with phonemic cues to support decoding in struggling readers

et al. 2020

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An advantage of digital media is the flexibility to personalize the presentation of text to an individual’s needs and embed tools that support pedagogy. The goal of this study was to develop a tablet-based reading tool, grounded in the principles of phonics-based instruction, and determine whether struggling readers could leverage this technology to decode challenging words. The tool presents a small icon below each vowel to represent its sound. Forty struggling child readers were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group to test the efficacy of the phonemic cues. We found that struggling readers could leverage the cues to improve pseudoword decoding: after two weeks of practice, the intervention group showed greater improvement than controls. This study demonstrates the potential of a text annotation, grounded in intervention research, to help children decode novel words. These results highlight the opportunity for educational technologies to support and supplement classroom instruction.

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“…Technology-based environments for instruction and intervention have some advantages over traditional methods, in that they are engaging, reduce social pressure to perform, are adaptable to individual performance with features like embedded scaffolding and feedback, as well as the crucial ingredient for struggling learners – extensive practice (Clark et al, 2016; Laurillard, 2016; de Souza et al, 2018). Nevertheless, meta-analytic findings report better student progress with teacher-based versus computer-based interventions (Dowker, 2005; Slavin et al, 2011), but these findings do not account for differences across computer-based programs, where some approaches may be more beneficial than others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than being considered as a replacement for human-led instruction, it is suggested that technology-based approaches serve primarily as tools that can be used to remediate or optimize learning experiences for all individuals (Dowker, 2005; Rose and Strangman, 2007). Accordingly, it is recommended that technology-based instruction conforms to known learning and pedagogical principles (e.g., Butterworth and Yeo, 2004; Hirsh-Pasek et al, 2015); that is by “using the combination of images and sounds and through a paradigm that tries to understand human behavior and, as well, employ an approach that matches how effective teaching actually occurs” (de Souza et al, 2018, p. 7).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Technology plays an increasingly important role in educational practice, including interventions for struggling learners (Torgesen et al, 2010; de Souza et al, 2018). This study focuses on the efficacy of tablet-based applications (see Word Reading, Grapholearn, and an experimental word-level program) for the purpose of supplementing early English literacy intervention with primary grades 1 and 2 children.…”

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Technology-Based Tools for English Literacy Intervention: Examining Intervention Grain Size and Individual Differences

2019

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Technology plays an increasingly important role in educational practice, including interventions for struggling learners (Torgesen et al., 2010; de Souza et al., 2018). This study focuses on the efficacy of tablet-based applications (see Word Reading, Grapholearn, and an experimental word-level program) for the purpose of supplementing early English literacy intervention with primary grades 1 and 2 children. The children were identified for learning support programs within Singaporean schools, which follow a bilingual policy, meaning children were learning reading in English plus an additional language. One hundred forty-seven children across seven schools participated (Mean age = 6.66). Within learning support classrooms, triplets of students matched on basic reading skills were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) phoneme-level, (2) rime-level, or (3) word-level focused interventions. All groups performed reading skills activities on iPads, across two phases over a 14-week period. Assessments for word reading accuracy and fluency, pseudoword decoding accuracy and fluency, and spelling were administered at four time points, pre- and post-intervention. Additional baseline measures were taken to assess individual differences in phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, general cognitive ability, statistical learning, and bilingual vocabulary knowledge. Mixed model analysis was conducted on the pre- to post-test measures across the two phases of the intervention (focused on accuracy then fluency). All groups made gains across the different literacy measures, while the phoneme-level intervention showed an advantage over the rime-level intervention, but not the word-level intervention, for decoding. There were also moderating effects of individual differences on outcomes. The general pattern of results showed an advantage of the word-level intervention for those with poorer phonological awareness for reading fluency; and a phoneme-level intervention advantage for those with poorer statistical learning ability. Children’s bilingual group (English plus Mandarin, English plus Malay, or English plus Tamil) also showed differential effects of the type of intervention (e.g., phoneme- or word-level) on different outcome measures. These results, along with data collected from the tablets during the intervention, suggest the need to examine the interplay between different types of technology-based interventions and individual differences in learning profiles.

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The Adventures of Amaru: Integrating Learning Tasks Into a Digital Game for Teaching Children in Early Phases of Literacy

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

Learning to Read in Multilingual Malaysia: A Focus on Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese

Learning to Read in Multilingual Malaysia: A Focus on Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese

Annotating digital text with phonemic cues to support decoding in struggling readers

Technology-Based Tools for English Literacy Intervention: Examining Intervention Grain Size and Individual Differences

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