Thinking Readers Part II: Supporting Beginning Reading in Children with Cognitive Disabilities through Technology

by Lucinda M. O'Neill and Bridget Dalton, Ed.D.

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Eleven-year-old Becky is totally absorbed in the electronic picture book on her computer screen, a digital retelling of the classic folk tale, The Gingerbread Boy. Using brightly colored illustrations and simple text, The Gingerbread Boy tells the story of a gingerbread cookie that escapes from the oven and has a series of encounters with animals who want to eat him. Becky, who has Williams Syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes physical problems and developmental delays, has reached the part in the story where the gingerbread boy tries to cross a river by hitching a ride on the back of the wily fox.

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Later, a learning prompt embedded in the digital picture book asks Becky to describe her favorite part of the story, either by typing her response in a text box or recording her response orally. "My favorite part of the story is when the fox ate the gingerbread boy," she says. "Do you want to type that?" Peggy asks. "No, I want to record it," she responds decidedly. Becky records her response three times before she is satisfied, smiling and clapping her hands at her accomplishment.

Raising expectations

It is an unfortunate truth that many children with severe cognitive disabilities have not had the opportunity to fully realize their potential because of low expectations for their development in the area of literacy. With conventional approaches to teaching reading, children with such disabilities often are not able to learn to read at a functional literacy level. Traditionally, literacy instruction for these children has focused on drill and practice; however, recent research by Koppenhaver and Erickson and their colleagues at the Center for Literacy and Disabilities Studies suggests that these students benefit from the same research-based instructional approaches that work for other students who are learning to read. That is, reading instruction that:

• Focuses on reading for meaning,
• Provides direct instruction in reading skills such as phonics and decoding (word recognition), and
• Offers children a wide choice of appealing literature.

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Becky is one of seven children with cognitive disabilities who are involved in CAST's Thinking Reader Project. Funded in part by the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation, the project draws on a well-established research base in how children learnto read as well as a new educational approach pioneered by CAST called Universal Design for Learning, which weds current research in how the brain learns with the flexibility of multimedia computer technology. The project is creating digital versions of popular children's stories that include a variety of built-in supports for the development of beginning reading skills in children with cognitive disabilities. "The project is about expanding possibilities and raising expectations for the literacy development of these children," says David Rose, CAST's co-executive director.

A powerful teaching tool

Unlike traditional print books, digital text has the flexibility to change in relation to the instructional goal and the individual learner's characteristics. The Thinking Reader picture books provide three instructional foci: comprehension strategies, story grammar, and decoding.

In the opening scenario, the instructional goal was comprehension and Becky's attention was focused on making sense of the story. Decoding was not an issue, since she could click on the text to have it read aloud. On another day, the instructional goal might be word recognition. When working on oral reading, Becky clicks on the decoding supports to help her sound out the words and practices reading aloud into the computer microphone. She records and listens to herself read, engaging in repeated readings that help her build her word recognition skills. On yet another day, Becky learns about character and plot as she responds to story grammar prompts. The Thinking Reader's flexibility in enabling teachers to set the goal of a learning activity increases Becky's opportunities for success and keeps her engaged in the targeted learning task for extended periods.

While it is possible for children to read electronic storybooks by themselves after some initial training, the Thinking Reader is designed to support an instructional dialogue between the child and a teacher or instructional aide. Students are put in charge of the computer mouse and choose many of the activities they want to pursue within the program. The teacher plays a key role, guiding students in responding to the learning prompts embedded in the stories. "It allows the teacher to have a conversation with the child about the text, moving beyond a rote response to the story or an over-reliance on yes and no responses," says Ron MacAdow, an instructional designer and manager of the Thinking Reader Project.

For example, asking students to retell a story in their own words is an exercise that contributes to both comprehension and the development of verbal skills. Erica, a student with cognitive disabilities for whom English is a second language, retells the story sequence in which the fox eats the gingerbread boy. "The fox say hop on my back, my tail is soaking wet," Erica relates. Moving to the next screen, where the fox is shown sitting alone in the grass licking his chops, she laughs out loud. Next, she clicks on the picture and hears the fox say, "Mmm, mmm, I love to eat gingerbread cookies," confirming her guess about the fate that has befallen the gingerbread boy. "At the end, he (the gingerbread boy) didn't listen again, all the time the cookie didn't listen. He doesn't have a brain," Erica concludes, laughing again.

A promising beginning

By providing children with cognitive disabilities with supports that enable them to make progress in all aspects of language and literacy development-reading, writing, listening, and speaking-CAST believes that the Thinking Reader and similar programs can help these children take critical steps towards independence.

Teachers report that they see their students actively reading and responding to the digital picture books in ways they haven't seen before in traditional reading instruction. "I think it's wonderful," one teacher says, citing the levels of support the program offers and the opportunities for children to "take charge of their learning" as specific strengths of the approach. "Children have definite ideas about what they liked about their work," she observes, commenting on how the program offers students the opportunity to listen to their own voices and review their progress. Another teacher commented that the program promotes students' oral language, noting that she observed one child talk more in a single session reading on the computer than she had in the previous five weeks of class.

Parents are also eager to see tools like this more available in classrooms. "I think it's been very positive," Becky's mom says of Becky's involvement in the program. "Her reading is taking off. Before, I thought her reading was more sight words or from memory, and now we can be out on the street and I'll say, 'What does that say?' and she can tell me."

CAST's current work with children with cognitive disabilities builds on a three-year study the organization conducted with a different group of "Thinking Readers"-middle school students with learning disabilities (Exceptional Parent, June 2001). In this U.S. Department of Education-funded study, CAST researchers evaluated the Thinking Reader approach with l02 students, most with learning disabilities and all performing below the 25th percentile in reading. The study demonstrated that students who used supported, digital versions of age-appropriate novels had greater comprehension gains on a standardized reading test than did a control group of students who did not use computer supports. The students who used computer-based supports also showed higher levels of engagement when interacting with the material and improved "on task" behavior.

Future directions

There is a growing body of research demonstrating the positive impact of computer-supported reading instruction and electronic picture books on students' literacy development. CAST believes that supported digital learning environments are the future of educational technology, and that designing effective learning environments for those students with more severe learning needs will result in more effective learning for all.

Lucinda M. O'Neill is a staff writer at CAST, the not-for-profit Center for Applied Special Technology in Peabody, MA. Bridget Dalton, Ed.D., is Chief Education Officer of CAST.