Jeannine Herron
California Neuropsychology Services
Spanish-speaking children in grades one and two will soon be able to use technology to learn to read and write in English, thanks to a grant from the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to California Neuropsychology Services, to create a version of Read, Write, and Type! program with Spanish translations. The program, which enables students to write whatever they can say, was developed to support explicit instruction in phonological awareness and phonetic decoding skills through experiences with language and print.
NICHD research carried out last year by Joseph Torgesen, Ph.D. at Florida State University, Tallahassee, showed that Read, Write, and Type! boosted reading scores significantly, and was as effective as the Lindamood approach when used with small groups of first grade students selected as "at-risk" for reading difficulties.
In a separate study, in Fremont, CA, 94 first-graders who used Read, Write, and Type! for 56 hours made significantly greater gains on blending, phonemes, reading, and spelling than a comparison group, and on a typing test they found keys with the keyboard and screen covered with 93 percent accuracy.
Read, Write, and Type! combines a strong phonics approach with writing and typing skills. The program uses phonics to link reading with writing and teaches skills through a 40-lesson curriculum. Students learn the sounds of each letter and where each letter "lives" on the keyboard. Then they apply their newfound phonics and typing skills, combining letter sounds to make words, sentences, and stories.
Read, Write, and Type! integrates several essential skills into one program. It provides systematic, explicit instruction in representing the sounds of the 40 most common phonemes in English, and it provides extensive practice in utilizing this phoneme-grapheme knowledge in writing and reading words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories.
Because the program emphasizes writing as a route to reading, children are encoding and decoding words as they type to dictation. They are getting instant auditory and visual feedback to correct their errors and are being encouraged to sound out the words aloud.
The program begins with animated stories and activities that tell the children to sound out each word as they write it on the screen. They begin sounding out letters, then short words and phrases until they are writing out complete sentences and short stories.
The new NICHD grant will not only provide for the Spanish version but will also provide new coding for ongoing assessment scores that will inform teachers and parents about how well children are doing and indicate whether they need more practice with certain activities. In addition, the grant will fund the development of curriculum materials to accompany the use of the software, and training videos for teachers and parents.
For more information, contact Jeannine Herron at (415) 456?4854, ggherron@aol.com
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