Download Connecting Processing to Reading

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
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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
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Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?” by Harvard’s Program on
Education Policy and Governance
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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,
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words and sentences and see their increases in processing speed.
The key elements that make UCanConnect an excellent resource
for struggling readers are:
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•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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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”.
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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 ______.
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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.
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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
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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].
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