What I’ve learned from my ten years of volunteering in school computer labs: The MOST important grade for increasing efficiency and reading skills in school is FIRST GRADE. And first graders can definitely learn to touch-type. No matter what the obstacles (and there were many) it’s important to encourage each kid to really learn to touch type. It takes practice, but with Read, Write & Type the practice is fun! Kids have such a wide variation in how their brains are wired, there’s a huge difference in practice time to learn the sound-to-keystroke (letter) habit. But the practice is worth it, because they’re learning the skills they need for reading and writing at the same time. And if they master the keyboard they are much more efficient and confident in their writing all through the rest of their school years.

-Fred Lewis

A message from Fred Lewis:

“Please read this article (Typing is the key to learning computer software). Kids need a keyboarding license before using a computer….just like a drivers license to drive.  Only Read, Write and Type does this. Middle school is way too late to teach touch typing.”

Teachers are waking up to the importance of typing skills for using just about any software program. But mostly they start too late–after hunt-and-peck habits have settled in. However, thousands of children are learning to type IN FIRST GRADE as they learn basic phonics skills with Read,Write & Type.

8 free lessons at www.talkingfingers.com.

Dear Jeannine,

I am now using Read, Write, and Type with a low-verbal, severely austistic ninth-grader here in my new state of South Carolina, with amazing results!

Her teachers had not thought that she could read or spell, and they have been put off by some of her behaviors.  It turns out that she has been frustrated, because the staff assumed she could not learn.  They were skeptical when I brought in my computer and started her on the program, but she took to it like a fish to water.  I add comprehension work to the story activities and encourage verbal imitation and responses.  We are almost half way through the program, and it is changing her entire curriculum- the teachers are now focusing on teaching her to read and write, which is increasing her communication skills- her parents are thrilled!  She was previously thought to be unable to sustain attention to any activity; however, with skilled support, she works on Read, Write & Type for 50 minutes, and I think would happily do more- Read, Write, and Type is changing her life.

I do not exaggerate the results from your programs, Jeannine.   Now, each week when I come in the door, she is visibly excited and independently brings pencil and paper and sits down to work; she then insists that we write in her communication book to home what we did on Read, Write & Type that day.  Best of all, the teachers now know she can read and spell words, decode simple sentences, copy the sentences from the stories and re-read them, write grocery lists and engage in real literacy learning activities at school.

But you know I have used the Talking Fingers programs successfully in many environments, both clinically and in school settings.  In fact, I have yet to find a student, thoughtfully placed, who did not respond to  Read, Write & Type..  Whenever I have an opportunity to provide a dyslexia evaluation, I include Read, Write & Type, and Wordy Qwerty in my recommendations for parents.

I am now serving a very poor, rural, southern school district as a speech-language pathologist.  This district needs to spend what little money they have very wisely for kids. Your programs are so economical compared to others!  I have shown some special educators the Talking Finger programs, and they would like me to spend some training time this January, showing them the program and sharing my results.

All the best for 2010!

Jane Coolidge, SLP-CCC

You have to remember what the letters look like….

You have to draw the letters….

You  have to erase…

You have to copy over…

Writing with a computer can make it easier…

You don’t have to draw the letters….just tap the right key.

You don’t have to erase…just delete and type over.

You don’t have to copy over…

You can read what you’ve written…

The text always goes from left to right…

She says,

“Developing fluency among struggling readers takes more intensive, carefully guided practice than either of these strategies can deliver.”

Jan makes a very persuasive case that these instructional strategies take up significant amounts of classroom time with dubious benefit. She quotes Marilyn Adams as saying, “if we want to induce children to read lots, we must also teach them to read well.”

Classroom time will be better spent building decoding skills and providing one-on-one guided oral reading.

A good computer program for guided oral reading is “Soliloquy”, designed by Marilyn Adams, (then renamed “Reading Assistant”). Find the program online at scilearn.com. The software actually listens to a child reading aloud and provides appropriate help.

Your child will only learn to read and write once! Don’t miss it!

Sometimes it happens in the space of a few short months. You can play a vital role, and it may be one of the most significant things you and your child ever do together. Reading and writing are the most important skills children learn for success and happiness in school and beyond.

Learning to read and write is a staggering accomplishment, much more difficult than learning to speak and to understand speech. Becoming literate is one of the most essential major learning experiences of modern life. It is a valuable tool for personal expression, and a doorway to the written wisdom of the brightest and most interesting members of the human tribe since history began.

I believe that computers offer an extraordinary opportunity for parents to participate in this critical learning experience with their children. Educational software and learning materials provid a unique framework for short enjoyable day-to-day lessons. A few minutes each day is all that it takes.

You will learn to help your child hear and identify the individual sounds in spoken words and represent those sounds with letters. Each of the 40 sounds can be made visible with a simple fingers-stroke on the keyboard. With these three skills, children can learn to write any word in their vocabulary – five or six thousand words for most first graders. (Spelling correctly will develop as they practice). There are only 40 sounds in English and 40 lessons to play. Play together 30 minutes/day for a week!

You’ll have so much fun, you won’t want to stop!

It’s easy! You’ll find a way to continue after a week, because you will realize that you are making an enormous difference. The lessons you learn on a computer can translate into real-life games as well, that you can play with your child in the car, or at the kitchen table. Spend the time finding the perfect computer program to use with your child. Then spend the time learning together. You won’t regret it.

However, when they get to third grade, they may start experiencing more difficulty because they encounter many more words that begin to look alike. If they have not learned to “sound-out” words using phonics skills, they will not be able to decode new words independently, and they may have more and more difficulty as reading becomes more complex. Guessing from context or pictures no longer works if there are too many gaps in a sentence to comprehend the overall meaning. If guessing becomes a strategy, children often begin to feel uncomfortable about reading, because they are not experiencing success. Their confidence lags, and their interest and curiosity can turn to frustration.

Try this simple test to assess whether a child is using phonics and knows how to sound-out new words. The words at the right are nonsense words. Cover the answers and ask the child to read the non-words on this page. The correct pronunciation is suggested in the parentheses. Listen carefully to the pronunciation. When children miss more than three, or take a long time to figure out each word, they need more practice with encoding and decoding words and non-words. The use of phonics should be automatic and unconscious, like riding a bicycle.

If you have our Read, Write & Type software, you can also insert the Spaceship Challenge CD, sign in as a GUEST, and ask children to play Level 2. If they have difficulty naming the pictures and identifying the sounds, or if they do poorly on reading comprehension or spelling, they will benefit from support with the extra activities and games suggested in the day-to-day lessons from our Read, Write & Type activity book. Download it for free on our website, and try practicing with your child today.

To download the activity book in PDF format, look for the link on our website, it’s number 7 on the list of “Read, Write & Type Learning System (RWTLS) PDF Documents”.

Pre-K Lessons Linked to TV Produce Gains in Literacy (but with a big caveat!)  This summary is from an article Education Week, Oct 21, 2009.

A new study has found that low-income pre-schoolers made significant gains in acquiring skills such as naming letters and knowing the sounds associated with these letters, and understanding concepts about stories and printed words.  These gains were found after children participated in a technology-supported literacy curriculum that used videos from “Super Why”, “Sesame Street”, and “Between the Lions” (PBS) as part of the Education Department’s “Ready to Learn Initiative”.

But the program used what they called ENGAGED VIEWING.

It’s engaged viewing that counts, said Shelley Pasnik, the director of the Center for Children and Technology of the EDC.  “It’s not simply turning on a video and letting it go on the screen unattended, but pausing the video and asking questions.”  The teachers in the study got 8 on-site coaching lessons on how to reinforce lessons, such as pointing to objects in the classroom that begin with a particular sound after the TV character has talked about that sound or its corresponding letter. The teachers also had access to a coach throughout the intervention.

A previous review of 15 randomized control studies of pre-school curricula found that only two, Bright Beginnings and DLM Early Childhood Express, had a significant effect on student achievement.  Only one of these studies included a technology-supported curriculum and it had no positive effect.  These studies do not necessarily reflect the value of the curricula, because so much depends on the way the curriculum is supported by the teacher or parent.

I strongly concur, whether the child is watching TV or using software, or hearing a story.  The most important thing is interacting with children to allow them to express what they have learned, to generalize from a particular item (for example, about the beginning sound in APPLE) and discern that it is a pattern or rule (ANTS, ACROBAT, AXE, etc).  Passive watching or listening must be accompanied by active response, especially with very young children.  Learning is like breathing—there has to be an IN and an OUT.

It’s the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, a gathering of over 300 researchers from around the world who study everything about reading — brain structure and function, related cognitive and behavioral issues, and instruction and intervention techniques. You can find abstracts of the talks on the SSSR web site.  I look forward to learning new things to add to the knowledge I have accumulated from my own research over the last 37 years.

I plan to post to this blog juicy tidbits of new information (and provide links to sources) that I get from conferences like this, plus my own thoughts about the progress of reading research.  The great news is that today we know a lot more about the role of good instruction and early intervention for children who may be at-risk for reading difficulties than we did when I began studying the link between the brain and learning in 1972. We know now how to avoid the struggles, the discouragement, and the loss of self-esteem for many children who might have experienced these difficulties in the past!

One big secret is to teach reading correctly in the first place, whether it happens at home or at school.  Parents and teachers need to understand the importance of phoneme awareness (understanding that the mouth must make several different sounds to say a word) and phonics (learning the letters that stand for those sounds). These two skills, built upon a strong base of conversation and vocabulary, are the foundation of reading and they are the skills that are hardest to master for children who struggle to read. It turns out from recent neuroscience research that they are essential for building efficient reading pathways in the brain.

Now that we know this, the critical tasks ahead, besides continuing the research, are to develop excellent research-based learning materials that children will love to use to help them on their way, and to communicate this new knowledge to you parents and teachers with how-to tips so that you can apply these discoveries with your own children or classes!

I call this blog “Let’s Talk about Reading, Writing, and the Brain” because that’s ” what has consumed me in the long journey I have taken as a research neuropsychologist at Stanford Research Institute, at the University of California San Francisco Medical School for 10 years, and as Director of California Neuropsychology Services for 28 years.  Since I founded Talking Fingers, Inc. fifteen years ago, we have also developed research-based software for teaching reading with several grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

I love conversation and feedback and hope you will post comments, questions, and your own links in reply. That’s the best way to enrich the journey, as we continue to search for ways to develop the skills and wisdom of our young citizens who will care for this earth and our tribe in the decades to come.