Literacy software shows no effect on grade 6 students’ reading

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REL Northeast and Islands conducted a randomized controlled trial in three states to examine the impact of a literacy software program on grade 6 students’ reading achievement and motivation to read.

The study, Impact of the Thinking Reader Software Program on Grade 6 Reading Vocabulary, Comprehension, Strategies, and Motivation, did not find a statistically significant impact of Thinking Reader on reading achievement and motivation outcomes for grade 6 students.

Thinking Reader software for grades 5–8 aims to improve adolescent literacy instruction by supporting students’ use of specific comprehension strategies while reading novels commonly used in middle grades language arts classrooms. Reading achievement and motivation outcomes for more than 2,400 grade 6 students in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were examined during the 2008/09 academic year. Teachers in the intervention condition chose three “digital novels” (from a selection of nine) for their students to read on the Thinking Reader platform. A control group of teachers, who taught in the same schools as the intervention teachers, taught their schools’ regular English language arts curriculum (also called “business as usual”).

Key findings include:

• Thinking Reader was no more effective than “business as usual” in the classroom at improving students’ reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, use of reading comprehension strategies, or motivation to read.

• The impact of Thinking Reader did not vary by students’ initial reading achievement scores or initial motivation to read.

• Teachers in the intervention classrooms received modest professional development (20 hours in the course of the school year) to prepare them to implement Thinking Reader in their classrooms as a partial substitute for their regular grade 6 reading/ELA curriculum. Data on implementation show that students’ actual use of Thinking Reader was much lower than what was recommended by the software developer (57.7 minutes per week compared to a recommended minimum of 110 minutes per week). Also, usage of the program and book completion fell off from the first to the third book.