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Connecting Processing to Reading A Handbook for Visual and Auditory Processing Skills Presented by: UCanConnect Reading Program Table of Contents •UCanConnect’s Purpose •Why UCanConnect Works •What Skills Do Readers Need? •Choosing a Training Level •Success Stories •Playing the Games •Technical Support 3 4-5 6-9 10-11 12 13-21 22 1. UCanConnect’s Purpose Our nation’s graduating high school class of 2011 had a 31 percent proficiency rate in reading, leaving many to question whether schools are adequately preparing students for the 21st century. U.S. students fall behind 16 countries in reading proficiency, according to the recent study1. When reading testing is done in the 4th and 8th grades, similar low proficiency rates (approximately 38% reading competency). Some of the reasons sited for the current disappointing outcomes are: •Unsystematic instruction in special education; all children in the resource room are treated alike and receive the same instruction even though they have varying degrees of delay. •Lack of practice at home for topics covered at school. •No special services are offered until a child has already begun to fail. UCanConnect’s strategy to improve reading outcomes is unique. UCanConnect not only focuses on the building blocks of proficient reading (letter knowledge, phonemic awareness, nonsense word reading, reading fluency and comprehension) but ties these building blocks to auditory and visual processing skills 1 Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?” by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance Page 3 2. Why UCanConnect Works Research recognizes that before we read, we must obtain specific visual and auditory processing skills. These vital skills of reading are often overlooked in deference to having children jump right into decoding words and reading text. UCanConnect increases visual and auditory processing skills in an engaging and motivating set of games. Easily accessible because of its web-based platform, the program allows children to hone these essential skills in approximately 30 minutes a day. UCanConnect consists of 12 games, which are rotated automatically in sets of 8 to ensure an exciting experience. The difficulty of the activities continually increases as your student progresses. To encourage and entertain, students are awarded virtual prizes that are used to build three rewards: a Mayan ruin, a castle and a pirate ship. The games are designed for children to complete independently. A completion bar at the bottom of each game allows the child to see how quickly they are moving through each activity. Weekly progress charts help the learner (and his/her parents) see the progress they are making through the 4000+ word chunks, Page 4 words and sentences and see their increases in processing speed. The key elements that make UCanConnect an excellent resource for struggling readers are: Page 5 •UCanConnect offers instruction that adjusts to each student’s ability. •UCanConnect is a web-based platform that allows the games to be played on multiple electronic devices. •UCanConnect was created around the essential elements of reading. •UCanConnect is a program that motivates students and renews self-confidence. •UCanConnect is designed for struggling readers or readers who want to advance from being good to great readers. •UCanConnect can rapidly increase the skills of students learning English as a second language. 3. What Skills Do Readers Need? Reading involves a variety of visual and auditory processing skills. Becoming a good reader means gaining the skills detailed below. Visual Processing Visual discrimination is a skill in which readers use sight to notice and compare the features of different items to distinguish one item from another as in letters and then words in a sentence. Children with poor visual discrimination have a hard time seeing the difference between two similar letters, shapes or objects. This affects their reading speed when learning new words and affects their spelling skills. Visual processing speed is the ability to recognize numbers, letters and words quickly, an important factor in good reading fluency. Research shows that children with fast visual processing speeds are faster readers than children with slow processing speeds. Visual sequential memory ability is the ability to determine or remember the order of symbols, words, or objects. This skill is particularly important for spelling. A child who struggles with visual sequencing may leave out, add or switch around letters within words. Recognizing and remembering patterns may also prove difficult. Page 6 Visual memory means that students must be able to look at a word, form an image of that word in their minds, and are then able to recall the appearance of the word later. Once the word is out of sight, students with good visual memory will recognize that same later on, for example in their books or when they are trying to spell or write the word. Visual closure is the ability to visualize a complete unit when given incomplete information or a partial picture. This skill helps children read and comprehend quickly and is essential for spelling. Children with poor visual closure may have difficulty completing a thought or making an accurate judgment from partial information. In reading, they may confuse similar objects or words, especially words with close beginnings or endings. Visual figure-ground is the ability to locate a single object within a complex background. This skill keeps children from getting lost in details. A child with poor figure-ground becomes easily confused with too much print on the page, affecting his or her concentration and attention. He or she may also have difficulty scanning text to locate specific information. Auditory Processing Auditory discrimination is the skill of being able to notice, compare and distinguish the separate sounds in words. This skill is vital for reading and spelling. When auditory discrimination is weak, chilPage 7 dren struggle to differentiate the phonemes in words, which greatly slows the ability to read. These children mishear similar sounding words, creating confusion in lectures or in spelling situations, for example, “fair” and ‘fear” or “will” and “whale.” These children eventually struggle to understand spoken language, to follow directions accurately or to remember details. Auditory memory is the skill to either remember something heard some time ago or the ability to recall something heard very recently. If there is an auditory processing deficit related to auditory memory, children will struggle with remembering people’s names, new vocabulary, or remembering details in a story, which affects reading comprehension. Auditory sequencing is the ability to remember or reconstruct the order of items in a list or to put the order of sounds in a word or syllable. One example is saying “hamgerbur” for “hamburger” or “pasghetti” for “spaghetti. This greatly affects spelling and word pronunciation. At the phoneme (sound) level, it impacts decoding skills. A child might sound out , “f-a-m-i-l-y” but then put it all together as “Mifaly.” Phonological awareness is the understanding that language is made up of individual sounds or phonemes, which are put together to form words. This is a necessary forerunner to reading. Children who have difficulty with phonological awareness will often be unable to recognize or isolate the individual sounds in a word, recognize similarities between words (such as in rhyming words) or be Page 8 able to identify the number of sounds in a word. These deficits can affect all areas of language including reading, writing, and understanding spoken language. Auditory closure is the ability to hear part of a word or phrase and fill in the rest in the “mind’s ear”. If we hear “O to the tore” we can figure out it means, “Go to the store” or “ba—ball” can be deciphered as the word “baseball”. When we become proficient listeners, we can hear a story and process the words or even a phrases as units, instead of processing each part of a word slowly. When good readers read, their mind “listens” to the story in the same way we do as if someone else is telling it them. Why UCanConnect? The games in UCanConnect were designed to address the skills listed above. By strengthening these skills, students are able to become better readers. Page 9 4. Choosing a Training Level The best place to start is by playing the trials on ucanconnect.org. Find the level where the games are challenging but not frustrating. Remember that each level starts out at a beginning pace (easy) and progresses to harder tasks. This helps students get acclimated to the games before being challenged by the increasing skill level of the activities. If the early games are too hard, that is not the level to choose. If you have subscribed to a level and need to change it, you may contact [email protected] within 10 days to make one level change (either going from level 1 to Level 2 or from Level 2 to Level 1). The levels have different content in them, with about 2000 words and 1000 sentences in each level. The games also vary in difficulty. This means a student can complete Level 1 and then move on to complete Level 2, gaining even more experience with improving processing and reading skills. Playing either level takes 25-35 minutes on average per day. The monthly subscription allows the student to play every day. Research indicates that three days a week should be the minimum practice time for a home program if reading is to be improved. Page 10 The levels are designed based on the student’s reading ability, not age or grade level. Therefore, a second-grade student might be comfortable on Level 2 while a fourth-grade student may need to start with Level 1. Level 1 is for readers who: •Know the alphabet but need practice sequencing it •Need to learn the first 1000 sight words •Need to learn rhyming skills and word chunks •Have trouble discriminating words that look similar •Have emerging reading skills and low visual and auditory processing skills •Have trouble with auditory memory skills •Need practice with spelling and reading comprehension Level 2 is for readers who: •Have reading skills but need more experience hearing and seeing the words •Are at least one year below grade level •Need to learn the first 2000 sight words •Need to increase rhyming skills by solving riddles •Have trouble with discriminating words that look similar •Have basic reading skills but slow visual and auditory processing skills •Have trouble with auditory memory skills •Need more practice with spelling and reading comprehension Page 11 5. Success Stories UCanConnect was developed by a caring team of professionals who want to impact children. We know that parents and students are extremely busy. The goal for UCanConnect is to help students who have “fallen between the cracks” at school and are missing vital skills. Readers are leaders, and at UCanConnect, we believe that every students can be a proficient reader. UCanConnect was designed to be entertaining and stimluating. We want learners to enjoy the games while parents watch their progress using the Progress Reports. Because the games are designed with mobility and busy schedules in mind, we hope that your student enjoys becoming a better reader in 30 minutes a day, whether they play UCanConnect on the bus while riding home from school or at your kitchen table while you’re making dinner. If you have a success story you’d like to share, please email us at [email protected]. Our team would love to share in your child’s accomplishment. Hearing from happy, improved readers makes our day! Thanks, The UCanConnect Team Page 12 6. Playing the Games The games in UCanConnect are described below. If you or your student have any questions while playing UCanConnect, feel free to read this section. Zip it to Z Level 1 improves visual sequencing, visual processing speed and teaches the order of the alphabet. The “A” will always be in the center of the screen, however the rest of the letters change position every time the game is played. The goal is to get faster over time. This level breaks the alphabet up into small parts so that all 26 letters are not on the screen at once. Zip it to Z teaches the alphabet using uppercase, lowercase and a mix of both. Level 2 uses icons in addition to letters to add to the skills addressed above. The difficulty of the visual sequencing and processing tasks are increased when students see an icon that begins with the next letter and must choose that small picture in the middle of thes sequence of letters. For example, a child might see A----B----(icon for C)----D----(icon for E)----F-----G----(icon for H), and so on, spread randomly around the page. Page 13 Run the Numbers Level 1 improves visual tracking, visual processing speed and number sequencing. The “Start” is always in the center with number “1” or “One”, however the rest of the numbers or words change position every time the game is played. The goal is to get faster over time and to learn number sequences. Students will work numbers one to twenty. Level 2 builds on the skills listed above and increases in difficulty, exposing learners to numbers one to one hundred. Dynamite Words Level 1 improves word sequencing, spelling, sight-word recognition and visual memory skills. The program says a word as it is spelled on the screen and the student has to study it quickly before it blows up. Then the student must click and drag the letters from around the screen to put the word back together in the right order. To hear the word again, click the ear icon. The words are presented from the earliest words to those that develop later. The progression of words in this level are for example, “no, be, yell, bed, two, wolf, next, stand, other, sister, people.” There are over 320 words unique to this level. Page 14 Level 2 continues to improve the skills listed above by adding more dificult words, for example, “down, little, animal, brother, whale, playing, really, across, during, shoulder, industry.” There are over 280 words unique to this level. Cram Sandwich Level 1 improves visual discrimination and word recognition skills. A sandwich will pile up in the middle of the screen. At the top of the sandwich, a word will appear and the student must look through the inside of the sandwich and click the same word 6 times. There are 375 unique word sets like, “fall, ball, tall”, “dad, did, dot” and “when, then, they”. The activity has the student forming 2-3 syllables into words from syllables found inside the sandwich, like, “birth-day, pop-corn” and “tel-e-phone.” Level 2 introduces more words and longer word sets, such as “new, knew, now, know”, “tree, three, free, there” and “addition, donation, addiction, donating”. This level has the student forming 2-3 syllables into words from random syllables in inside the sandwich, like, “back-fire”, “night-light” and “at-ten-tion.” It’s all a Frame Up In Level 1, students improve letter and word recognition and discrimination, visual processing speed, and eye-hand coordination. A letter shows up in the middle of the screen. When letters start to appear around the frame’s edge, the student must click on the Page 15 letter that matches the one in the center. Once 8 correct letters are found, the game is over. At the end, a short video plays in the frame. As the game progresses, the letters or words move faster around the frame. There are 55 sets in this game, progressing from single letters, to letter combinations, to words, like, “b, p, d”, “sa, so, se”, and “nut, hut, rut”. In Level 2, students will continue to work on the skills above using 45 sets of phonemes and words, progressing from single letters, to letter combinations, to words, like, “s, x, z”, “ip, id, if” and “web, wed, wet”. Chunkin’ Along Level 1 improves word recognition, visual tracking, and visual processing speed. The student reads the word chunk in the middle of the screen. Then as the rock chunks float by, he/she must click on the rock with the exact same chunk on it, seven times. There are 50 sets of similar looking chunks, like. “elt, olt, alt” and “ine, ibe, ide.” Level 2 tasks involve building the chunks from the first level into words. A Big Copy Cat Level 1 improves visual spatial skills, visual tracking and sequencing skills, and visual processing speed. The student watches the Page 16 pattern build on the left side of the screen. Then, on the right side, the student must start at the blue dot and click the circles in the correct order, to make the exact same pattern. The difficulty increases from 4-dot patterns to 9-dot patterns. The unique patterns are randomized automatically. In Leve, 2, the difficulty starts with 5-dot patterns and increases to 12-dot patterns. Squared Away Level 1 improves auditory memory and auditory discrimination skills. The student clicks on a square and listens to the word. Then he/she clicks another square and listens to that word. If the two words sound exactly alike, the student clicks “Sounds Right to Me!” at the bottom of the screen. If they sound different, the student must try to make the corect sound combination with two other squares. This game was developed to ensure that a child cannot solve the puzzle through a random clicking method. If the two selected squares don’t match, the student must go back to a previous square where he/she heard the word and click it again. A blue line appears around the chosen squares, and that is the time to click the “Sounds Right to Me!” button. As the square pieces are matched, a jungle photo is slowly revealed behind them. The game progresses from 12 squares in a game to 24 squares. There are 68 sets; for example, “flat, float, fly, flies, fast, vat, vote, vast, bat, boat”. Page 17 On level 2, there are 70 sets with longer and more difficult words, such as, “leave, sleeve, heave, tease, please, knees, peas, weave”. Getting Wordy In Level 1, students improve word discrimination, visual-spatial skills, sight word recognition, reading comprehension and visual processing speed. The student reads the word in the middle of the screen, and then looks at the rest of the words around the screen. The student must click the 8 words that are exactly like the middle one. Once the 3 different words have been found, it’s time to use them in the sentences which will appear one at a time on the lower half of the page. For example, for the set “eat, ate, ant”: A lion will __________ meat. An _________ will lift a leaf. We __________ the pizza for lunch. There are 55 word sets and 6 sentences per set in this game. Level 2 has 50 word sets and 6 sentences per set and works through more difficult words and sets. For example, “wrote, write, white”: He ______ a note yesterday. I painted the fence ______. Page 18 I want to ______ a letter to my mom. Get in Shape Level 1 improves visual closure skills and visual processing. The student needs to look at the four empty shapes at the top of the page, and then study the 3 words below. He/she clicks on the word that will fit perfectly into that shape and clicks the shape to see if the word pops in. In order to ensure that students don’t randomly use process of elimination, one extra shape is added that none of the words will fit into in order. The words begin with 2-letter words (go, to, as, by) and progresses up to 5-letter words (right, seven, geese, plays). There are 60 unique sets of words. Level 2 begins with 3-letter words (boy, job, joy, mad) and progress up to 5-letter words (moths, frame, brown, snail). Rhymin’ Time In Level 1, students improve rhyming skills, auditory discrimination, and phonological awareness. Three native huts appear on the page. Above each hut is a word from a different rhyming family. At the bottom of the page are 15 words, 5 from each of the rhyming families. The student listens to a speaker directing him/her to click on the words, one at a time. The student must click a word, then click the hut (rhyming family) to which it belongs. If the stuPage 19 dent is correct, the word swoops into the hut. When all of the words are in their correct huts, they come back out and appear at the bottom of the page again. For example: “Find mink. Find dill. Find chin.” This game is comprised of 60 rhyming-word families. Level 2 increases in difficulty by presenting a riddle that the child must answer with a rhyming word. For example, for the huts “lock, dog, hop” might accompany the riddle sentence, “It rhymes with block, and it is a place to tie up a boat.” (Anwer: dock). The student should have clicked on the hut with the word “lock” over it. On this level, there are 5 riddle sentences for each rhyming word, creating 15 randomized sentences per day. Hey! Listen Up! Level 1 improves auditory memory, visual word discrimination, and auditory discrimination. The student must listen to the list of numbers, letters or words. When the 3 lists appear on the screen, he/she must click on the list that was heard. The numbers, letters or words are often similar sounding or in a different order than heard. The list starts at 2-digit (number, letter or word) lists and progresses to 5 digits. Page 20 For example, the student hears, “me, sun, big” and must choose from: me, sun, big sun, me, pig be, me, pig There are 80 sets. Level 2 starts at 3-digit (number, letter or word) lists and progresses to 6 digits. For example, the student hears, “6, 5, 9, 2” and must choose from: 6, 9, 5, 2 1, 9, 5, 2 6, 5, 9, 2 Page 21 7. Technical Support Our goal is to answer your questions and provide technical support in a timely manner. If the answers ucanconnect.org are not exactly what you need, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. Page 22