Thursday, August 20, 2015

Exciting results from the Pilot of Lee con Ángel, Spring, 2015

Kishmorr Productions, LLC Pilot Report 

Testing Results from Pilot of Spanish Reading Program Lee con Ángel

     In a Dual Language Program of a Public School District in Texas in January, 2015 the Kishmorr Productions, LLC team administered the Pre-Test and other tests to 131 students in two schools of a school district on the outskirts of a major Texas City. The identity of the school district, schools, and especially the students are to remain anonymous for privacy. For this four month pilot students accessed Lee con Ángel via the internet with Chrome Books in classroom literacy stations.

     Kishmorr Productions, LLC is a company founded by Bette Kish and Lori Morris, two retired Bilingual teachers, who created the online program titled Lee con Ángel. This supplementary program has helped children in Bilingual classrooms and Dual Language classrooms to learn to read in Spanish. Since children are so much more engaged with activities on a computer rather than pencil and paper and Educational technology has become an important component in classrooms, it is appropriate for ELL students in primary grades to have the same resources as their English speaking peers. Making this especially valid is our experience with Bilingual students who have shown that skills learned in one language strengthen and enhance skills learned in a second language. Therefore, we have set out to pilot our program with the purpose of gathering data regarding the effectiveness of Lee con Ángel, the online Spanish Reading Program for Pre-K- Second graders.

     Seven Dual Language classes participated in this pilot: three Pre-Kindergarten and four Kindergarten, where team teachers share students. On average, each class had five native English speakers and the rest were native Spanish speakers. All classes are teaching children to learn to read in both English and Spanish. The partner teachers chose one class to use the program 15 minutes a day for 3-5 times a week. Every class was tested, but only half had access to the program, making the other half the control group. (One Pre-Kindergarten teacher had a Dual Language class but didn’t have a counterpart to act as a control group, so we will look at growth in that group, and compare progress with the other ‘partner' classes. )

     These schools implement a district-wide Dual Language Program designed by the teachers and administrators of the district. The District Coordinator chose the two schools that participated in the pilot. One is in a more rural setting, while the other is in a more suburban, higher Socio-Economic Status (SES) area. In January, each student was given a Pre-Test, Letter Identification Test (LID Test) and, if he or she could read, a timed word test where students read as many words as possible in two minutes. We did not want to stress the children or force the tests on the students, so we took over a week to complete the testing. In May, the students were given a Post-Test, LID Test, Word Test, and a Concepts of Print Test (labeled Ángel Conceptos de Impresa), all in Spanish.

     To begin the comparison, Class A was the morning group that used Lee con Ángel and Group B was the afternoon group that did not have access to the program. This school is in a more rural setting with a lower SES. One-third of the students are native English Speakers, while the rest are native Spanish Speakers. The most dramatic difference is between the Pre-Test and Post-Test scores.
The control group, in the same rural setting school, has made an overall improvement of 23% when comparing the Pre- to Post-Tests, while the class that used Lee con Ángel made an improvement of 34% in four months. Individual scores from the latter students show that they went from knowing an average of four letters out of the 61 tested to knowing 48 of the letters and sounds on the LID test. Their peers, who did not have access to Lee con Ángel, began with some students not being able to recognize any letters to being able to recognize an average of 35 out of 61 correctly identified sounds after the same four months of instruction without the program.

     After careful analysis of individual results, the underlying story with Class A is that all but one student showed significant gains in basic literacy skills. After using Lee Con Ángel, the lowest score on the LID Test was 12; but everyone improved. Fourteen students knew more than 50 of the 61 letters, and three students knew 30-50 of the 61 Spanish sounds.

     Comparison of Pre-Test results to Post-Test results based on percent correct
In class A, with 22 tested students, used Lee Con Ángel and had 56% of the students passing the Post- Test, 76% knowing most letters of the Spanish alphabet, and 52% identifying basic concepts of print. Both Classes A and B have the same teacher, in the same school, and from the same community. Students in both classes are predominantly Spanish Speaking, and are learning to read in their native language.
     Class B, has three students who improved more than 50% on Post-Test scores as compared to the Pre-Test scores, five who improved more than 20%, and six who improved by a range of 5-19%. There was one student who decreased by 15% and one who did not take the Pre-Test. Only 33% of students mastered the Post-Test, 57% could identify Spanish letters, and 38% could tell six basic concepts of print in Spanish.

    Comparison of Pre-Test results to Post-Test results based on percent correct
    Class B only improved 23% from Pre-to Post-Test and students could only identify 38% of Spanish concepts of print at the end of four months of instruction.  Class A, their counterparts, enjoyed 34% improvement overall. Group A had 20 students included in this study, not counting one student who moved in after January. Group B had 17 students total but due to transiency, there were only 15 students included in the pilot who had been present for the entire four months.
The Kindergarten children at the same school as the previous groups had two teachers who team teach in the Dual Language Program. One teaches in English while the other teaches only in Spanish. Students rotate back and forth all week to divide their time equally between the two teachers and two languages. In these two classes, the percentage of improvement of scores between the pre-test and post-test  with the most dramatic results to note are the four students who improved more than 61% on the post-test, as compared to the results of the pre-test from Class C. This is not evident with those in Class D who were denied access to the online program Lee con Ángel.

    While both classes ended up with very similar results, the group that used Lee con Ángel made more progress. They also knew more letter sounds than the control group. The glaring difference between these two groups is the number of students with negative results. Of the students who used the program, only two made a lower score on the Post-Test than they did on the Pre-Test; however, the control group had nine who regressed during the same four month period.
Further results come from the school in a more suburban, more affluent area of the district. As in the previous groups, Kindergarten classes E and F have two teachers. One teaches in English, while the other teaches all content in Spanish. Students learn both languages while learning the concepts required by state standards.
Percentage of correct responses on Pre-Test compared to Post-Test
In classes F and G both showed improvement; however, the group who used Lee con Ángel could read more words after four months.

     Classes F and G have students who are more diverse as a few are Asian and a few are African-American. Other students shared stories of grandparents coming from South America or the Caribbean Islands. Their parents want them to be bi-literate, and several are multi-lingual.
For Class F, students showed improved scores for the Pre- to Post-tests. 79% knew the concepts of print when asked in Spanish, 55% of them could read words in 2 minutes, and 97% of them knew the majority of the 61 letters of the Spanish alphabet. Results are similar when compared to the control group that is in the same school, same grade and shares the same teachers, but did not have access to Lee Con Ángel on the computer. Careful analysis between these two classes reveals that the students who used the computer program knew 16 more sounds than the students who did not use the program.

     Class G enjoys very similar results to Class F, who used Lee Con Ángel, but the major difference is the number of students who can read words in a timed setting. Of the students from this pair of classes who were tested with both Pre-and Post-Tests, there were 48% of students who can read, while the group who had access to the computer program to help them learn to read in Spanish had 55% who could read. Individual test scores revealed that seven students in Class F could read 35 or more words in two minutes where in Class G, only four students could read that many. Please note that these two classes had very high performing students and benefits of Lee con Ángel were more dramatic in the more rural school where students began with fewer skills. Although all students benefitted from the online reading program, Lee con Ángel is more effective with students who need remediation or motivation to learn literacy skills.

      The last group to consider is Class E, the Pre-Kindergarten group in the Suburban school that has no partner class. There is only one Dual Language Pre-K class in that school. The teacher has 15 students, 9 of who are native English Speakers. Figure 12 shows the scores from the 5 tests administered to these students. Individual analysis showed that seven out of 15 children learned more than 15 letters. Four went from not knowing any letters, to being able to identify over 30 letters or sounds. Also, all students in Class E made progress during this four month pilot.

     All the participating teachers reported that students enjoyed using Lee con Ángel, which is something that data does not reflect. Furthermore, one teacher gave a video testimonial where she described how a non-verbal student gained enough confidence after using Lee con Ángel to begin speaking to her and other students in his native Spanish, while another was able to learn Spanish by using this program online. This is a testament to the value of songs that engage the auditory learner, how interactive games engage the tactile/ kinesthetic learner and visual cues engage the visual learner. Brain research principles are incorporated into Lee con Ángel and students responded by being engaged and learning.

     In order to continue proving that Lee con Ángel can help children learn to read in Spanish, we hope to conduct a lengthier pilot in the future to show more extensive student progress. We would like to thank the administrators, teachers, principals and children of this school district for cooperating with Kishmorr Productions, LLC and allowing us to come into the classrooms to test students. We know that interruptions to instruction should be kept to a minimum as these are the types of things that vary instruction from class to class and slow down progress. Despite variances in teacher personality, priorities regarding instruction and differences in student abilities, the data from this pilot does confirm overall that students who had access to Lee con Ángel performed better on the Post-Test, recognized more letters, read more words, and identified more concepts of print in Spanish than those who were in the control groups.
For more information visit: www.leeconangel.com
Or email us at: contact@kishmorrproductions.com