• Even in a virtual classroom, preschooler

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Mon Apr 11 22:30:36 2022
    Even in a virtual classroom, preschoolers can gain reading skills

    Date:
    April 11, 2022
    Source:
    University of Washington
    Summary:
    A new study finds that children can develop key reading skills in
    a virtual classroom with other students.



    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    When the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools nationwide, students of all
    ages - - from high-schoolers in Advanced Placement classes to preschoolers getting the hang of the ABCs -- shifted to remote learning on a screen.


    ==========================================================================
    And while learning to read in an online setting may seem a tall order,
    a new study by the University of Washington's Institute for Learning &
    Brain Sciences finds that children can develop key reading skills in a
    virtual classroom with other students. Researchers say their "Reading
    Camp" program demonstrates not only the effectiveness of the approach,
    but also the potential to reach larger numbers of students remotely,
    by necessity or by choice.

    "Children are ready to learn to read at the age of 5. But the pandemic
    robbed children of the opportunity for in-person reading instruction. What we've shown here is that an online Reading Camp designed to promote
    learning socially works phenomenally well. An online camp can be used
    all over the world by children anywhere, and that is truly exciting,"
    said faculty author Patricia Kuhl, co- director of I-LABS and a UW
    professor of speech and hearing sciences.

    The study, published online March 31 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, details a two-week reading program, which teachers provided remotely to
    83 5- year-olds beginning in fall 2020.

    Learning to read involves a series of steps, from recognizing
    distinguished sounds in a language (phonological awareness), to
    identifying the names of individual letters and how they sound
    (letter-sound knowledge), to decoding words and their meanings.

    The study finds that the participants demonstrated learning of specific
    reading skills, such as phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge,
    when compared to a control group of children who did not receive the instruction.



    ========================================================================== I-LABS researchers, including study co-author Jason Yeatman (now at
    Stanford University), in 2019 offered a two-week reading summer camp to
    teach early literacy skills to pre-kindergarteners and measure brain
    activity before and after instruction. With the onset of the pandemic
    in spring 2020, researchers decided to adapt the in-person Reading Camp
    into an online version over Zoom.

    Ahead of the remote camp, researchers mailed parents a kit of materials,
    which included headphones, worksheets and books, as well as Play-Doh,
    toys and other fun items for use in the lessons. Children used colored
    plastic eggs from the kit, for example, to "vote" for the right answer
    in their virtual classroom, rather than raising a hand.

    The Reading Camp grouped children into six-person classrooms, each
    with two instructors trained in the specific skills lessons. Sessions
    lasted three hours a day, with several breaks, short lessons broken up
    by activities, and ending with a story time. The classrooms were often
    broken into even smaller, three- student breakout rooms, each with a
    teacher to focus the lessons and games.

    "This shows that we can actually teach kids online if we're using the
    correct methodology, keeping them engaged, and they're interacting
    socially with their peers and teachers," said Yael Weiss-Zruya, a
    research scientist at I-LABS and the study's first author. "Combining
    all of this made it successful." Children in both the Reading Camp and
    control groups took several standardized and non-standardized tests to
    assess knowledge of letters, sounds and words.

    The results showed that the Reading Camp participants improved in all
    of the reading skills measured, and their phonological awareness and
    knowledge of lowercase letters and sounds, in particular, more than the children in the control group.

    "Frankly, I had my doubts about whether 5-year-olds could learn to read
    online without a live tutor. But when I saw these 5-year-olds on Zoom
    laughing and encouraging each other to listen and hold up the right
    color egg, I was amazed.

    Their social connections to each other were obvious, and their learning
    was incredible. They called each other by name and seemed very eager to
    see each other on the screen," Kuhl said.

    Researchers plan to hold additional online reading camps, and to add
    brain scans prior to and after the camps to evaluate how learning to
    read affects brain development.

    The study was funded by the Bezos Family Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Petunia Charitable Fund.

    Additional co-authors were Suzanne Ender, Liesbeth Gijbels, Hailley Loop,
    Julia Mizrahi and Bo Woo, all of I-LABS.


    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Washington. Original
    written by Kim Eckart.

    Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Yael Weiss, Jason D. Yeatman, Suzanne Ender, Liesbeth Gijbels,
    Hailley
    Loop, Julia C. Mizrahi, Bo Y. Woo, Patricia K. Kuhl. Can an Online
    Reading Camp Teach 5-Year-Old Children to Read? Frontiers in Human
    Neuroscience, 2022; 16 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.793213 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220411133459.htm

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