Using a range of educational and psychological techniques to significantly boost reading ages, ReadingWise (English) is suitable for children and for adults and helps everyone from below-average readers to those with special educational needs.
Using a range of educational and psychological techniques to significantly boost reading ages, ReadingWise (English) is suitable for children and for adults and helps everyone from below-average readers to those with special educational needs.
Domain
country
Team involved
1 Business analyst
1 Manager
3 Full-stack engineers
Story
ReadingWise is an E-Learning program that helps students with learning disabilities master reading in the English language. Schools across the UK and Europe use ReadingWise as a Literacy Intervention tool to help the 20% of students struggling with reading.
However, when ReadingWise approached us, none of its core learning modules or assessment tools had been developed. The company needed us to create an application that could improve students’ reading skills without hands-on assistance from teachers.
And, because the program was to be used in schools across the UK, it needed to be universally acceptable and work on the outdated software and hardware of some schools.
GeraIT develop in Ruby to a high standard, with a friendly and professional team of great communicators.
Boz Kay
Project Activities
Technologies and Integrations
E-Learning for Mastering Literacy
The Process
In order to provide students with a stand-alone learning experience, we designed four modules that diagnose and strengthen areas where their reading skills are suffering.
Decoding Module
The foundational program in ReadingWise, the Decoding Module is designed to improve reading skills for students with a reading age below their physical age.
The module assesses the student’s reading age and assigns the appropriate curriculum, which contains 30 chapters with 20-30 individual lessons.
These lessons take place in 20 minute sessions where students learn through animated, multi-sensory activities that combine word sounds with images and other quizzes to improve literacy.
Lessons are capped with learner progress reports so children can see how they scored and what rewards they achieved.
Comprehension Module
Built to help students develop and understand the meaning behind a story’s narrative, the Comprehension Module combines independent learning with group discussion and teacher oversight.
Each student works independently through the module’s adventure narrative, “The Red Stone of Calcutta” while completing mega-skills and mini-skills. These comprehension activities challenge students to identify keywords, dig deeper into the text, describe word pairs, teach synonyms and build summarization skills.
The activities are facilitated through interactive technology and allow students to receive instant feedback on their performance, further developing their understanding of the English language.
After completing the module, students hold a group meeting with a Teacher’s Assistant to discuss the story and review the new skills they have learned. Each TA is trained by ReadingWise in effective comprehension skills to best reinforce student learning.
ZIP Module
The ZIP module teaches children letters and sounds to support them while learning phonics.
In combination with word sounds and written words, the module encourages adaptive learning using a smart algorithm that detects when students have mastered sounds and reading.
ZIP uses three levels of programs, each containing a different set of words and sounds, to maximize student learning.
It also features fonts specifically to assist students with dyslexia, as well as localized audio with various accents for children learning in different parts of the world.
Vocab Module
Based on an algorithm using Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT), the vocab module teaches students new words by pairing them with descriptors like images, definitions, and synonyms.
When a student matches the word with the correct descriptor, he receives +1. If he chooses the incorrect descriptor, he is given -1.
Once the student correctly associates the word with the right descriptor three times (+3) the word is considered “secure” and the student is allowed to progress to new vocabulary.
The Solution
By combining key literacy lessons with an assessment system that helps students understand how they are graded, covers subjects fully, and provides a clear review of student skills, we helped ReadingWise create a program that can teach struggling readers in greater numbers than ever before. With teachers dashboard it's easy to monitor each student's progress.
The Result
When using ReadingWise for just 20 hours, the average student improves their reading age by 9 months. Schools in Britain, Spain, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand rely on the course as their main literacy intervention tool.
