How students and teachers use ReadToMe | A Case Study
A grade-wise cross-sectional study of classroom engagement behavior with ReadToMe®
About ReadToMe®:
ReadToMe® is a multi-sensory AI reading and comprehension software. The design and deployment of ReadToMe® is guided by the principles of learning science:
– Multi-sensory learning: Students learn better when they engage multiple senses.
– Repeated exposure: Learning words multiple times improves retention.
– Usage in own context: Students comprehend better when words are presented in their own context at their desirable level of difficulty.
For a detailed explanation of the learning science behind ReadToMe®, please refer here. [1]
The usage of ReadToMe® in school:
We recommend strategies to integrate ReadToMe® in class during the orientation of teachers at school. These form the basis of our suggested lesson plans. However, ReadToMe® is ubiquitously used in a wide variety of textbooks, boards, and grades. Given this, we analyzed patterns of usage across grades and boards to determine if there are specific ways in which different grades used ReadToMe® for comprehension of the textbook.
Before we dive deep into the findings, let’s understand the building blocks of language learning, specifically with respect to reading and comprehension.
How students read and comprehend English as a second language:
Language learning is not necessarily sequential. However, there are foundational skills that we learn as we become proficient in the language. [2] Our path to increasing the ability to communicate in a language progresses from knowledge of the phonemes (individual sounds – English has 40 of them) to morphemes (meaningful combination of phonemes) to ultimately grammar. [3] These also progress advantageously from reception of the language (through listening and reading) to production (speaking and writing).
ReadToMe® breaks down this progression to its elemental form, from decoding to being able to speak English effectively. The various tools available in ReadToMe® enable one or more of these building blocks of the acquisition of English as a second language.
Please note that all tools, as a whole, enable students’ reading and comprehension. Some ReadToMe® tools are also directed specifically at building particular abilities.
The building blocks of learning English as a second language and the ReadToMe® tools that specifically also enable the corresponding ability are presented in the pyramid below.
Based on this, we hypothesize that there is a difference in how ReadToMe®, specifically its various comprehension tools, are used across sections of grades. In this case, grades might be used to interpret the different proficiencies of students.
Our Findings:
To test the hypothesis, we examined ReadToMe® usage across a diverse cross-section of schools in terms of region, type of location (rural/urban), grades, and student mix. The profile of the schools is presented below:
| Differentiating features | School 1 | School 2 | School 3 | School 4 |
| State | Delhi | Odisha | Andhra Pradesh | Tamil Nadu |
| District | Delhi | Cuttack | Ananthapur | Villupuram |
| District Orientation | Urban | Urban | Urban | Rural |
| English Proficiency of Students | Higher English proficiency, Local Population | Low English proficiency, Migrant & transient student body | Low English proficiency, Tribal community | Medium English proficiency, Local Population |
| Grade span | Higher Secondary School | Higher Secondary School | Secondary School | Primary School |
| Grade(s) examined | Grades 6,7, and 8 | Grade 9 | Grades 9 and 10 | Grades 1 to 5 |
Our examination revealed some clear patterns:
1. The Pronounce tool was used across all grades and schools.
2. The Spell tool and Picture Dictionary are popular with classes in the lower grades.
3. As students progress to higher grades, and with increasing ability, the Translate tool and English Dictionary available on ReadToMe® are used regularly to aid comprehension.
This pattern is illustrated in the figure below:
These findings are consistent with how English is learnt as a second / foreign language.
Conclusion:
ReadToMe’s design is informed by learning science, with suggested lesson plans and best practices to integrate with the school timetable. Based upon the proficiency and hence, ability of students, ReadToMe® is successfully used differently across grades. Lower grades, where the focus revolves around decoding and syllabification, use pronunciation tools the most. As students progress, the focus of learning evolves into comprehension and spoken language. We see classes from the higher grades use ReadToMe® tools for translation to build on existing student proficiency.
This finding is important as it informs best practices for the 180,000 teacher community that uses ReadToMe® in class, impacting nearly 15 Million students.
Significance of the Study:
Knowing the usage behavior of ReadToMe® has multiple beneficial implications on the engagement of teachers with the intervention:
A. It builds a corpus of ReadToMe-related pedagogical best practices by the teacher-facilitator, for the teacher-facilitator.
B. It makes the intervention more relevant for the teacher-facilitator as they use it to meet the learning objectives that they have designed for students. By recommending learning strategies that are correlated with students’ abilities rather than a “one-size-fits-all”, ReadToMe® and its associated lesson planning material delivers an adaptive approach to meeting class-level objectives.
C. Understanding ReadToMe’s application at the most granular level opens up a pathway for a more discerning evaluation of engagement and resultant learning outcomes. For instance, in the lower grades, student outcomes can be correlated with the frequency and extensiveness of the use of the spell tool and picture dictionary on ReadToMe®, to arrive at a holistic understanding of student comprehension and suggest recommendations, if needed.
This study underscores the significance of identifying engagement methods through user-driven behavior patterns, and not being limited to purely academically identified methods.
Reference:
1. Erica Schramma, Multi-Sensory Learning and Technology in the Acquisition of English as a Second Language, https://www.englishhelper.com/resources/research-center/2017/12/23/multi-sensory-learning-and-technology-in-the-acquisition-of-english-as-a-second-language/
2. Jaafar, S., Building Blocks of Language, https://www.academia.edu/34202254/Building_Blocks_of_Language