Capstone. Task 1. Prospectus PDF

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Prospectus for capstone task 1. Based on K-2 letter reversals....

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Combatting Letter Reversals Makayla Robles Western Governors University Pauline Lipscomb

May 15, 2021

2 Capstone Prospectus Topic The educational topic that I am researching focuses on multisensory teaching practices to limit letter reversals from happening. Multisensory teaching benefits all students, because it integrates visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic elements into learning (Johnston, 2019). Using more of the senses activates more parts of the brain, which allows more connections and associations to be made (Cottrell, 2013). Memory and learning are strengthened when a concept has multiple connections because it makes it easier for the brain to find that information when needed for later use. Multisensory teaching is also beneficial because it can be tailored to the wide range of individual needs, therefore creating a more inclusive learning environment (Newman, 2019). This new model of teaching education is important because nearly 15-20% of elementary aged students have difficulty mastering literacy skills in reading and spelling (Joshi, Dahlgren, & Boulware-Gooden, 2002). When reviewing the most foundational building blocks of literacy, such as letter-sound correspondences, one can see that it is a highly complex process. One of the reasons why many students struggle with early literacy is because many letters are hard to discriminate visually, such as the letters b and d or q and p (Van Reybroeck, & Michiels, 2018). The similar structure of certain letters can cause students to frequently reverse them when they are practicing reading and writing skills. This can cause many problems because if these letters are mistakenly reversed, the student may use a different sound or letter in its place. This is a problem because it can lead to students having a hard time comprehending and writing text. In my current professional setting, I tutor six students who are significantly reversing letters. The letters that they are most frequently reversing are the lowercase letters b and d. This

3 letter confusion has unfortunately caused my students to second guess themselves, as they have started to frequently pause during reading and writing to determine the correct letter-sound correspondence. This ongoing problem is important to address because it has started to negatively affect their education. If this problem persists, then these students may fall behind in literacy. To combat letter reversals, I am creating a multisensory instructional unit hoping to solve this problem. Problem Statement I tutor four second grade students and two kindergarten students who are significantly struggling with reversing letters. As they are beginning to experience more difficult material, this problem has started to negatively impact their reading and writing skills.

Problem Discussion Learning letters comes with many challenges, but it is important for educators to teach these essential skills at a young age. This is because “alphabet knowledge is consistently recognized as the strongest, most durable predictor of later literacy achievement” (Jones, Clark, Reutzel, 2013). Although reversing letters will not stop a student from being successful in reading and writing, it can sure limit their abilities. Letter confusion can become detrimental if the problem becomes significant and persists. Researchers are still unclear as to why letter reversals happen. When this phenomenon was first discovered, scientists assumed that it was a problem amongst only left-handed individuals (Fischer, Luxembourger, 2018). Recent findings, however, found that theory to be inconsistent. Many studies have disproven this idea, by conducting experiments using both left-handed and right-handed children. New empirical research has found that this problem is not amongst certain

4 children but have questioned if the orientation of the letter has more to do with it. For example, one study proposed that individuals prefer to write right-oriented letters (Fischer, 2017), whereas another study proposed that the placement of letters on a 2x2 grid made a difference, despite its orientation (Fischer & Luxembourger 2020).

Proposed Solution I am proposing an eight-hour instructional unit that uses multimodal practices to combat letter reversals. I will first begin the study by asking for consent from all six of my participants and their parents to be a part of the study. Once I receive all consent forms, I will start my instructional unit by administering a pretest (Appendix B). After the test, we will begin the instructional unit.

Lesson 1: Relearning How to Write the Lowercase Letters b and d “the Fundations Way” (1 hour) Step 1: Pre-instructional Activities: Begin with joking with students about how annoying it is when I have to correct the direction of their letters or when they have to pause and think about letter b’s and d’s when they are reading. Then, I will explain the importance of knowing these letters and why the instructional unit will take place.

Step 2: Content Presentation: I will first explain that to begin the lesson, we must first “relearn” how to write the two letters. I will begin by teaching the letter b. I will explain that there are many ways to write the letter and I will demonstrate a few on the white board. As I write each letter, I will ask, “who has written the letter this way?” After writing a few ways that I have seen students form the letter, I will then show them the way that I want them to write it

5 which is from the Foundations Curriculum. I will teach them to start at the “skyline,” trace down to the “grass line,” trace back up to the “plane line” and go around back to the “grass line.” I will demonstrate this five times. Then, I will have students demonstrate while I direct them.

After practicing the letter b, I will move on to the letter d. I will again show them a few different ways of how I have seen students form the letter. I will teach them the foundations why by explaining that they start with the “c” first and then turn it into the letter d. As I demonstrate the letter I will say aloud, “you start at the plane line, make a ‘c’ to the grass line, trace up to the skyline, and back down to the grass line.” I will demonstrate the letter four more times and then will ask students to demonstrate with me while I direct them.

Step 3: Learner Participation: After the lesson, I will bring out a game for students to practice called Letter bucket. I will have two bins and 10 balls. One bin will have the lowercase letter b on it while the other bin will have a lowercase letter d. The balls will be separated equally by each letter so there are five balls for each letter. To earn a ball, students must write the letter the “Fundations” way on a whiteboard. Once they earn a ball, they will quickly run to place the ball into the correct bin. The first player to place all 10 balls in the correct bins wins. When they finish, they can practice writing the two letters the “Fundations Way” before the assessment. Step 4: Assessment: Students will show me how to write each letter five times the “Fundations way”

6 Lesson 2: Learning the c-way (1 hour) Step 1: Pre-instructional Activities: Practice writing lowercase letter b and d the Fundations way. Step 2: Content Presentation: Teach students the difference between lowercase letter b and d by pointing out the letter c is made in order to make the letter d. Step 3: Learner Participation: Students will make a letter d art project. The only requirement is that they create a large letter d, but they can decorate or create it out of any material. They can even find things around the room or pictures that start with the /d/ sound and glue it onto their project. When finished, students will practice writing the letter “d” the Fundations way Step 4: Assessment: Students will be given a short passage to read that emphasizes the letters b and d. They will highlight each letter d that they find.

Lesson 3: Learning the “b- Hand” (1 hour) Step 1: Pre-instructional Activities: Review lowercase letters b and d the “Fundations” way. Step 2: Content Presentation: Give students a rubber band to place on their left hands. Teach them that it is called their “b hand.” Show students how their hand can be a tool for differentiating the two letters because if they put their fingers together to make a circle and raise their pointer finger, a b is made. Step 3: Learner Participation: Create a letter b project, similar to lesson 2. Step 4: Assessment: Students will be given a short passage to read that emphasizes the letters b and d. They will highlight each letter b that they find while using their “b hand”

7 Lesson 4: Learning the “bed-diagram” (2 hours) Step 1: Pre-instructional Activities: Practice writing lowercase letter b and d the Fundations way. Step 2: Content Presentation: Introduce another strategy to differentiate the letters called the bed diagram. Step 3: Learner Participation: Give students a practice worksheet to use. Step 4: Assessment: Students will create a bed diagram art project. Students will begin by coloring 20 pictures that start with the letter b and letter d. Once they finish coloring, they will then receive a paper with a large bed on it, a template of a large b, and a template of a large d. They will cut the letters out and then glue them on the bed. The b will be placed on the left side of the bed to represent the headboard, and the d will be placed on the right side to represent the other headboard. Then, they will cut out their pictures that they colored and sort and glue them onto the large letters based on their beginning sound. Once finished with the assessment, I will check off each of the pictures in my notes for how many they got correct.

Lesson 5: Word Hunt (1 hour) Step 1: Pre-instructional Activities: practice writing the letter b and letter d the Fundations way. Review all three ways of differentiating the letter b from the letter d. Step 2: Content Presentation: Give students a 1 page reading passage to read together. Model how to use the three strategies while reading. Step 3: Learner Participation: Ask students to grab their favorite books. They will be given a T chart to use as they read. When coming across a word that starts with the letter b or d, they will write those words down in the appropriate section of their T-chart.

8 Step 4: Assessment: students will show me their words on their T-chart. I will ask them to use either of the three strategies to explain why each word belongs there.

Lesson 6: Memory Game (1 hour) Step 1: Pre-instructional Activities: Go over the three strategies. Students will complete a practice worksheet. Step 2: Content Presentation: I will present a matching game and demonstrate how to play. I will explain that each deck will have 20 cards. To play the game, students will place the cards face down and take turns. At their turn, they will flip over two cards. If they flip over a picture card that matches the right letter card, they may take the cards. When a player takes the cards, the opposing player will double check their work by using the bed diagram. The player with the most cards at the end wins. Step 3: Learner Participation: Students will play the game. Step 4: Assessment: Students will receive 30 picture word cards. Taking one at a time, they will write the beginning letter for each word.

Lesson 7: Letter Bowling (1 hour) Step 1: Pre-instructional Activities: Review three strategies. Students will complete a practice worksheet. Step 2: Content Presentation: Introduce game by explaining general rules of bowling such as where to stand and that they will have two chances to knock down the pins before needing to set them up again. I will then explain that each of the 10 pins will either have a letter b or a letter d under it. When they bowl and knock down the pins, they will have to come pick up the pins and

9 walk over to the picture cards. Each of the five rounds will have different cards. These cards will be pictures of thing that either start with the /b/ or /d/ sound. For each round, students will stand the pins that were knocked down onto a picture that corresponds to the letter. The student with the most correct pins at the end of the five rounds wins. Step 3: Learner Participation: Students will play the game. Step 4: Assessment: Based on observations as they play the game.

After the Instructional unit, I will give students the same test that they completed before the start of the unit to determine the effectiveness of the instructional activities. This post test can be found in Appendix B.

Participants This unit was designed for the four second graders and two kindergarteners that I tutor. These students are a part of a small suburban school district that is comprised of three elementary schools. Of my students, I have at least one student attending each of them. My two kindergarten students are in the same class. Two of my second graders are also in the same class, whereas the last two second graders attend the other two schools. At the beginning of the school year, all learning was online due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but as cases went down the district decided to use a hybrid learning platform. When this became available a few months ago, two of my students enrolled in the district after deciding that the homeschool programs were not working for their families. Of my learners, I have one second grade boy and five girls. All of which are from Caucasian descent, with one being half Mexican. I have tutored these students at their homes for 3-15 hours a week since the start of September.

10 In this school district, students in kindergarten through second grade learn from the Foundations Curriculum. In kindergarten, students are first exposed to the alphabet, whereas in second grade they are now marking up text, reading random phrases, and reading longer passages. My second-grade students are mostly proficient in the entry level skills, but struggle with the lowercase letters b and d. They are frequently reversing what the letters look like and what sounds they make. One of the skills that are associated with this issue is that students are not forming the letters the way they were taught in kindergarten through the Fundations curriculum. As for my kindergarteners, they are both at different levels of understanding. One student is well above grade level, whereas the other needs some additional support sounding out and writing words. Both students, however, still struggle with differentiating the lowercase letter b from the lowercase letter d. These students are highly motivated to address this problem because they are aware of the negative implications that letter reversals have caused them in both reading and writing content areas. Two students have even requested to have further lessons, and all are showing positive attitudes towards fixing this problem.

Research Question(s) How does an instructional unit with multimodal strategies impact a K-2 students' ability to differentiate mirrored letters, as measured by pre and post-tests?

Data Collection and Instruments and Methods The data collection methods that I will use for this study are pre-tests, post-tests, and an assessment recording sheet. The recording sheet (Appendix A) will be used to keep track of each

11 assessment and how students scored throughout the study. The pre-test (Appendix B) will be administered to students before the instructional unit starts, whereas the post-test (Appendix B) will be given at the end of the unit. The pre and post test will be the same test and will consist of three parts. The first section of the test will judge letter recognition. Students will be given a list of 15 letters that consist of the lowercase letters b and d. They will point and identify each of the letters as they read them aloud. The evaluator will write the score and any notes on the assessment recording sheet. The second section of the test will assess students’ reading abilities when facing mirrored letters. The students will read 30 short vowel words. Each of these words will have one or more lowercase letters b and d in them. The evaluator will write the score and any notes on the assessment recording sheet. The last part of the test will test students’ writing abilities with words that have mirrored letters. The evaluator will read a list of 20 short vowel words to the student. The student will write each of these words down. The evaluator will write the score and any notes on the assessment recording sheet. The pre and post tests will judge the effectiveness of the quantitative action study by comparing the differences of scores.

Data Analysis I will analyze the quantitative data that I received from the pre and post test scores by using descriptive statistics. I will calculate the arithmetic average of the scores from the pretests and compare it to the average score of the post tests. The difference between these averages will show the amount of growth and understanding participants have gained throughout this instructional unit. To look for individual growth, I will look at each participant’s scores individually and calculate the difference between the scores from the two tests. If it is found that there are no significant differences between the pre and posttests, then that is an indicator that the

12 unit could be revised for better results. If there are greater differences between the tests, in which students scored much higher on their posttest, then it would mean that the instructional unit was effective in helping students differentiate mirrored letters. I will help visualize this information by using bar graphs to present this data.

The quantitative data collected will assist the research question because it directly views the impact of multimodal teaching practices on students’ ability to differentiate mirrored letters. By using pre and posttests to collect this data, it can easily be determined if the unit was effective in fixing this problem.

13 References Jones, C.D., Clark, S.K. & Reutzel, D.R. (2013). Enhancing Alphabet Knowledge Instruction: Research Implications and Practical Strategies for Early Childhood Educators. 41, 81– 89. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-012-0534-9 Fischer, J.-P. (2017). Character reversal in children: the prominent role of writing direction. Reading & Writing, 30(3), 523–542. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9688y Fischer, J.-P., & Luxembourger, C. (2018). A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children. Education Sciences, 8. Fischer, J.-P., & Luxembourger, C. (2020). The Battle between the Correct and Mirror Writings of a Digit in Children’s Recognition Memory. Education Sciences, 10(7), 183. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10070183 Johnston, V. (2019). Dyslexia: What Reading Teachers Need to Know. Reading Teacher, 73(3), 339–346. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1830 Joshi, R. M., Dahlgren, M., & Boulware-Gooden, R. (2002). Teaching Reading in an Inner City School through a Multisensory Teaching Approach. Annals of Dyslexia, 52, 229–242. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-002-0014-9 Newman, I. (2019). When saying “go read it again” won’t work: Multisensory ideas for more inclusive teaching & learning. Nurse Education in Practice, 34, 12–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2018.10.007 Cottrell, S. (2013). The Study Skills Handbook (fourth). Macmillan International Higher Education/Red Globe Press, an imprint of Springer Nature Limited.

14 https://books.google.com/books? hl=en&lr=&id=sqOLDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=I6mORdUdI_&sig=ffUDd7fx UTlWAI27CY5YD1i6TB8#v=onepage&q&f=false. Van Reybroeck, M., & Michiels, N. (2018). Finger-writing intervention impacts the spelling and handwriting skills of children with developmental language disorder: a multiple single-case study. Reading & Writing, 31(6), 1319–1341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145018-9845-6

Appendix A Assessment Recording Sheet Assessment Title: ________...