Suggested Activities for Sunshine Reader^?

A goal of Vaudio Media formatting is to provide teachers and/or parents with a vehicle for systematically addressing reading instruction. Toward this end, the educator has been given a rather simple mechanism for keeping track of progress. Each phrase has a number associated with it. These numbers run from one to "n" for any given chapter and can be used to make assignments and to act as a reminder to teacher and student as to where the current assignment had begun and ended. The use of a folder will aid the teacher and student so that assignments can be tracked as they are fitted to the needs of both parties. Such simple record keeping represents only a limited burden to the teacher, but offers exceedingly great benefit to the student by providing the teacher with a vehicle for discussing a child's progress with the student, his parents or the teacher's supervisors. This approach to record keeping, because of its simplicity, allows parents to participate in their children's instruction and remediation:

Learning by Forcing Success

The main pattern of activity that is associated with the use of Sunshine Readers is a two-step dance in which the student engages in reading practice on the computer followed by mastery demonstrations to the teacher, parent or paraprofessional. On the basis of success or failure during the demonstration, the student can move ahead or repeat the text, or both move ahead and repeat. The decision is the instructor?s alone, but may be made in negotiation with the student. This practice directly addresses comprehension as well as fluency, since mastery will consist of answering questions about the text content, as well as accurately reading the chosen selection. However, the presumption at the earliest stages of reading instruction is that fluency implies comprehension, because the vocabulary and syntax of early material is already within the grasp of children who speak English.

Getting the Questions Right

There is a folder on the Sunshine Reader CD containing files with comprehension questions and answers along with copies of the texts of each of the works in the Table of Contents. These can be printed many times and can be used for homework or class review without the need for access to a computer. The questions are designed to force attention back to the text, since each is keyed to the text by "phrase number." Students are expected to demonstrate mastery by answering ALL the questions as if they were taking a test. Each page of questions can be copied and supplied to the student as many times as is necessary to get all the questions right. The test is taken under standard conditions, BUT only after the student decides that he has indeed mastered the answers. On the bottom of each page of questions is room for date, time and number of attempts. Number of attempts is an important parameter, because it cues the teacher or parent as to whether to increase or decrease the number of questions that should be expected from the student. By the way, it is a fine practice to give the student the answer sheet, as long as the final test is given without the student having access to them. The questions are difficult, frequently containing a touch of humor. Understanding humor in any language requires the highest level of comprehension, since multiple levels of meaning are present. The linguistic difficulties of the questions are sufficient justification to supply the student with the answer sheet.

Broadening the Definition of Comprehension

After exhausting the questions on the CD-ROM, comprehension can be further addressed by asking the student for definitions of words, explanations of phrases, and summaries of entire reading assignments. Such questioning can require written or oral responses. Some words are defined for the student within the Sunshine Readers in the "Difficult Words" list that can be used to check for vocabulary and concept grasp. Other words can be defined through standard dictionary assignments.

A Fading Paradigm for a Dictation Exercise

Requiring that the student listen to words or phrases or short paragraphs without access to the written text and then to having the student write what he has heard can test a different level of mastery. Such an exercise used to be known as "dictation," but it has fallen out of favor. Vaudio Media material is uniquely capable of mediating such an assignment, since the test items can be pre-assigned and repeated by the student until mastery has been attained and only then demonstrated to the teacher. In addition, the teacher may choose to gradually lower the brightness control, available on most computer monitors, until the screen is completely dark, thus implementing a fading paradigm for the dictation exercise.

Exercising Memory

Memorization of poetry used to be a staple of education. Today it is rarely used, though justifications for eliminating the exercise seem to be couched in euphemistic terms that are little more than expressions for "dumbing down." With Vaudio Media formatting a graduated and controlled return to this form of instruction can be initiated. For example, the Beginning Reader disk contains short tongue twisters and haiku poems that constitute good vehicles for memory work. They are fun because they tap rhythms and visual imagery that have made such material universally interesting to children for generations. The Early America disk contains The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, a staple poem for memorization for past generations, except the current one.

Organic Spelling

Spelling words can be taken directly from the reading assignment. Isolated spelling exercises have always struck students as artificial, though they have rarely ventured to state the obvious since the exercise was so accepted as a rite of passage in school. Now spelling words can be extracted from the text that is being addressed.

Cultural Riches

Sunshine Readers are always richer in information than texts geared only to decoding ability. For example, the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling contains geographical references that can be easily morphed into map lessons. Some of his stories take the student through South Africa, others East Africa and Arabia, and yet others through Australia, and South America. Anthropology is presented in a child's context in some stories, while architectural concepts appear in others. The richness of these stores was not lost on previous generations of child readers, but has been lost to the current one. There is no need for this to be a permanent loss with the use of Vaudio Media's Sunshine Readers.

Challenging the Challenged

Sunshine Readers are valuable for dyslexics (as well as ADD, ED, and English Language Learners). Most dyslexia is partial, gray, where a limited number of words can be mastered on a background of generally failed decoding. For the severest dyslexics, the presence of an audio track can be a true blessing, allowing such students at least to hear their reading assignments. However, for the "gray dyslexics" Vaudio Media formatting permits the laborious generation of collateral pathways within the brain to compensate for the initial state of the dysfunction. Even for light gray dyslexics, those only mildly effected, such collateral pathways need to develop under the richest possible conditions of stimulation. There is nothing wrong and everything right with repeatedly utilizing the same stimulus complexes ? the same poem, the same word list, and the same short paragraph ? until mastery is achieved; teacher or parent does not have to abandon material before mastery is complete. Indeed, if the repetition is slightly boring to the student and the shared expectations between student and instructor are such that no change in the assignment will be expected until mastery, then the student, under most circumstances, will find a way to move toward the only open door available ? escape by successful completion of the assignment at hand. It then becomes the instructor's responsibility to modulate the length of the assignment and the rate of repetition of previously mastered material to prevent frustration and withdrawal from the reading task. Such careful modulation represents optimal use of Vaudio Media formatting and requires the same skill and intuitive sensitivity of the diamond cutter working with a precious stone.

Supplying Different Strokes for Different Folks

The use of Sunshine Readers adds a new dimension to reading instruction. Because auditory material is comprehended more easily than the reading of precisely the same material, the metric used in choosing the level of difficulty for any given reader becomes a real issue. We are all familiar with the type of student who can decode material with limited or no comprehension and at the polar opposite the student who understands the material at hand, but who can not extract information from the reading selection formulating those very same ideas. The interaction of decoding and comprehension becomes a much more intriguing and critical issue in reading development when using Vaudio Media formatting, since reading selections no longer need be highly correlated with decoding ability. In the "era before Vaudio Media" comprehension was artificially reduced to the level of decoding ability. Now the two variables, decoding and comprehension, can be allowed to vary somewhat independently. Therefore, a teacher may at times encourage "listening only" so concepts can be introduced, but require decoding competence at the next stage to reinforce and reify those concepts. Fortunately for the student and the teacher, fostering the repetition of inadequately decoded or comprehended material can increase the correlation of reading and listening comprehension again.

Challenging the Unchallenged

From the foregoing formulation we derive the following understanding: the only students who do not need Vaudio Media formatting are those who hear clearly in their heads the words on the page as they read. However, the definition of this group is forever expanding and contracting based upon the novelty and complexity of the material being presented. In the end, then, almost everyone can profit from the availability of audio equivalents of written text and from the unique combination of audio and visual text available in Vaudio Media materials, because such a combination makes a stronger impact than presentation of the same material to only one sensory modality. Life for the reader, challenged or not, and for his teacher has now become more productive.

The Newest Styles

Styles of learning have been described in the literature in rather abstract terms. Within ten minutes of observing two students using Vaudio Media formatting, learning style will have a new, practical, and highly observable meaning. Variations that have been observed include but are not limited to the following:

This list is not exhaustive, only illustrative of the many variations that become available to the student. The essential core of these observations is that Vaudio Media formatting permits and encourages all these variations on the theme of reading mastery, giving opportunity to unencumbered choice. Students take these approaches whether they have been asked to read the material for fluency or whether the focus is on comprehension. In some cases, a student will get caught in an inefficient style so that progress is slowed, but this circumstance offers a chance for the teacher to intervene and present a more efficient approach. Even if the student does not accept the teacher recommendations, it may start within him a willingness to experiment with new approaches that will in the end suit him as well or better. He needs only to accept the idea that he can be flexible in his own approach to learning.

Recreational Reading

Recreational reading with the use of Vaudio Media formatting will have a different impact than recreational reading using standard paper-based texts. Text paired with its audio equivalent will more likely draw weak readers to the task. When the reading gets tough, then the student may come to depend upon the audio support, so recreational texts must be chosen with that understanding in mind. Dependence upon the audio model to the exclusion of the written word will arise when texts are substantially above ability of the reader. However, should this phenomenon occur, the instructor can be consoled with the knowledge that what will be strengthened in the student are the complex language forms that are more associated with written material than with spoken language. Therefore, involvement with the audio text may be encouraged in recreational reading, but with the provision that the students who engage in this "shortcut" should be instructed to at least follow along with the written text so that they will become familiar with the form of the words. With some training in following along with the mouse, the ?shortcut? of reliance upon the audio model will become a valuable experience that is different from the criterion-based instructional techniques described above. Most important, any form of reading is better than not reading at all, which is usually the case for the challenged reader. It is here that the teacher can intervene to accustom the challenged reader to use the "phrase mode" as more effective in "following along" than would the paragraph mode, where he is more likely to lose his place and squander the opportunity to associate the auditory language to its written form. When engaging in recreational reading, relatively non-challenged readers will revel in their ability to outstrip themselves in terms of covering difficult material, but here as well it would be wise not to insist on micromanaging a student's choices. Some students will insist on taking on material that is far too advanced for their abilities, while others will perennially insist on sticking to "baby stuff." The instructor will ultimately be chastened by the wisdom of these choices, since they are designed to meet needs of some sort whether the student can express their origins or not. What should be kept in mind, whether in criterion-driven assignments or in recreational reading, is that the availability of an audio track fosters engagement with the reading task at a level far above what could normally be expected from a paper text containing precisely the same material.

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