ABRACADABRA!Early Childhood Literacy Project

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Recommended Citation

RECOMMENDED CITATIONHarper, H. & Helmer, J. (2011). ABRACADABRA! Early Childhood Literacy Project. Menzies School of Health Research, Darwin, NT.

ISBN: 978-0-9871535-4-8 (paperback)ISBN: 978-0-9871535-5-5 (online)

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The text in this booklet is based on the three full reports of the ABRACADABRA (ABRA) project from 2008 to 2010. The full reports are available on the website of The Centre for Child Development and Education (www.ccde.menzies.edu.au).

We are grateful to the funders who made this project possible. The Telstra Foundation provided the founding grant, and we received additional funds from The Fred Hollows Foundation, Collier Charitable Fund, the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. An Australian Research Council Industry Linkage Grant in partnership with the Telstra Foundation, the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance in Montreal, and the Northern Territory Department of Education and Training enabled the 2010 Randomised Controlled Trial.

The ABRA Project would not have been possible without the schools, teachers, and students who participated in the research. We are especially indebted to the ABRA teachers who spent long hours learning ABRA, assisting researchers during data collection, and diligently completing logbooks.

The success of this project depended on the support of many people beyond the research team based at Charles Darwin University. We are grateful to colleagues from the Menzies School for Health Research, the University of Western Australia, the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre at the University of Sydney, and the Centre for the Study

of Learning and Performance, who provided advice to the project. As Chief Investigators for the research, Professor Jonathan Carapetis, Professor Phil Abrami, Associate Professor Tess Lea, Associate Professor Peter Morris, Professor Bill Louden, and Adrienne Kirby provided essential expertise in research design and statistical analysis. We thank Dr Steven Humphrey, Professor Paul Torzillo and Dr Rob Savage, who also contributed their expertise to the project. Additionally, we thank Greg Moo and staff from the Information Technology Services Division in the Northern Territory Department of Education and Training, who assisted by maintaining and updating the software on the Department’s servers.

Finally we’d like to make special thanks to all of the Telstra employees who volunteered their time to help us assess the children involved in the study: Christine H. Barnden, Gregory Bourke, Christine Brauner, Mark Cepak, Anoma Crowley, Tracey Cumming, Lisa Curtis, Allan Dancer, Vickie Harper, Tanya Hogan, Annette Jones, Colin Jones, Patricia Kelly, Marilyn Last, Shona McKeen, Donald Pennell, Ginette Preston, Robert Preston, Laurice Tanios, Helen Vanheems, and Pauline White.

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Contents

Executive summary 7

Why this study? 8

What is ABRACADABRA? 9

Testing the students 10

The ABRA study: Year 1 pilot study 11

The ABRA Study: Year 2 quasi-experimental study 12

The ABRA Study: Year 3 randomised controlled trial 13

Case Study 14

Teacher training and support 15

How teachers used ABRA 16

What teachers thought about ABRA 17

What students thought about ABRA 18

Key findings 19

Future research 20

Recommendations 21

Useful Links 22

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We conducted the three year ABRACADABRA Early Childhood Literacy Project in Northern Territory government primary schools, beginning with a pilot study in 2008 to establish the feasibility of using ABRA in an Australian, largely Indigenous context. The results

Executive Summary

ABRACADABRA (ABRA) is a free, online

interactive computer tool that was designed to help teachers teach

basic literacy skills to young children. It has previously been

systematically trialled in Canada, where it was

first developed.

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of the pilot were encouraging and we followed it in up 2009 with a quasi-experimental study in six schools, this time including a control group of students who were not instructed using ABRA. In 2010, the final year of the project, we conducted a multisite randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test the hypothesis that ABRA would improve student literacy significantly more than traditional instruction alone. We also carried out an ethnographic case study in the same year to learn how teachers were likely to use ABRA when they were not receiving intensive support.

We found that children who received instruction with the help of ABRA performed consistently and significantly better on phonological awareness (awareness of English language sounds) and phoneme-

grapheme (sound-letter) correspondence than children who had not used ABRA. This was the case across all schools, for children of varying ages. We also found that ABRA was equally effective for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

Both the RCT and ethnographic case study confirmed that teachers needed a high level of support when they first began using ABRA. We would need to do further research to find out about ABRA’s long term impact when used by teachers receiving less support; and to understand how best to sustain interventions such as ABRA over the long term.

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Why this Study?

Despite a great deal of effort and investment in the task of making

schooling work better for Indigenous children in

recent years, we still have a long way to go before

Australian Indigenous children are achieving the same academic outcomes

as their non-Indigenous peers. The difference

is more pronounced in remote and very remote

regions and is particularly acute in the Northern Territory (NT), where Indigenous students

make up nearly half of the student population.

Economic disadvantage, poor attendance rates, and the remoteness of many Indigenous communities are some of the factors often cited as contributing to the low academic achievement, along with the non-English speaking backgrounds of the children, their prevalence of hearing loss and high rates of teacher turnover.

Clearly, there is no one strategy that can address all of these issues. However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that students who do not master basic reading skills in their early years are likely to fall further behind with the passing of each school year. This in turn suggests that interventions targeting children very early in their formal schooling could be highly effective.

In the ABRACADABRA (ABRA) Early Childhood Literacy Project we set out to find out whether ABRA, a web-based early literacy instructional tool that had been developed in Canada, could be used to create an appropriate intervention in NT classrooms. We also set out to find out whether using ABRA as a support to literacy instruction would be more effective than using other resources.

Experimental research, measuring the effect of an intervention, is rare in Australia, let alone in the NT context. This is because the

process of conducting this kind of research is both expensive and challenging. Our overall intention in setting up the ABRA research was thus threefold: to monitor how well an internationally-developed educational tool such as ABRA would work in the NT context; to demonstrate a rigorous process of systematically testing an educational intervention; and to show that experimental research in the context of Indigenous education is neither impractical nor unfeasible.

For this reason we set up the ABRA project in three discrete phases from 2008 to 2010, beginning with a pilot study in three schools to establish the feasibility of using ABRA in the NT. We followed this with a quasi-experimental study in six schools to provide preliminary evidence of ABRA’s effect on student literacy outcomes; and completed the study with a randomised controlled trial in a further six schools to test the hypothesis that complementing regular instruction with ABRA would improve student literacy significantly more than traditional instruction alone.

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What is ABRACADABRA?

ABRACADABRA (ABRA) stands for A Balanced Reading Approach for

CAnadians Designed to Achieve Best Results for All. ABRA is a free, web-based resource that was developed by the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University in

Montreal, Canada and was created to support teachers

in teaching foundational literacy skills.

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ABRA is organised into 32 instructional activities embedded in 17 stories. These activities allow teachers to target specific skills, and to guide students through a progression from simple to more complex tasks. The activities support instruction in • alphabetics, including phonological

awareness (recognising language sounds), letter naming, games to help children recognise letter patterns in words, and games to help children decode words

• fluency activities to help children develop reading expression and speed

• writing, allowing children to apply principles of phonics and their literacy experiences to the writing of words and sentences

• levelled comprehension activities, including simple tasks like placing a familiar story in order (beginning, middle, and end) and more complex tasks such as summarising an entire text. There are also question prompts that encourage students to think critically about a text and to respond appropriately.

Research in Canada has shown that ABRA is popular with students, teachers and parents and that children respond positively to the characters and to the game-like design of the activities. Since 2004, several RCTs and quasi-experimental studies have been conducted in Canadian classrooms to measure ABRA’s impact on Kindergarten (Transition) and Grade 1 students’ literacy and it has been shown to enhance literacy with a diverse range of students. Because ABRA is embedded in a framework of rigorous testing and development, it has an advantage over other literacy software in Australia and North America which has not been as rigorously tested.

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Testing the Students

We used two tests, the Group Reading and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE) and the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools - Baseline Assessment (PIPS-BLA), to measure children’s literacy skills before and after the ABRA interventions.

The GRADE is a diagnostic tool that is widely used to measure children’s reading ability, especially in Canada and the United States. The lower level test (GRADE K) measures • phonological awareness (sound

matching and rhyming)• early literacy skills (print

awareness, letter recognition and ability to recognise same and different words)

• phoneme-grapheme correspondence (ability to recognise letter sounds)

• word reading (ability to read grade-appropriate words).

The PIPS-BLA is a computer-based assessment developed by the Curriculum Evaluation Management (CEM) Centre at Durham University in England. An Australian version (narrated by an Australian and with Australian imagery) of PIPS-BLA was introduced to educational jurisdictions and schools across Australia in 2001. In Australia, studies have specifically examined the reliability and validity of the PIPS-BLA when used with Indigenous students.The PIPS-BLA consists of three measures which are• reading• phonics (repeating words,

splitting words, making sounds and hearing sounds)

• mathematics.

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We would have been unable to carry out this testing without

the generous support of Telstra employees

who volunteered to help us.

Volunteers from Telstra

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The ABRA Study: Year 1 Pilot Study

The pilot study ran during 10 weeks in three schools: a remote community school; a remote town school; and an urban school. There were 126 students who participated in the study.

Results of the 2008 pilot studyWe tested students after the 10 week period of teachers using ABRA four days a week for at least 30 minutes a day. Their test results showed that they had made significant gains, especially in their phonological awareness.

Because of the limitations of a single-group design, we were not able to use the pilot study to make any claims about causality. That is, we could not say whether ABRA was the reason for students’ improved scores in the assessments, whether the improvements represented natural growth, or whether the scores were a combination of the two. Yet there were two reasons to believe ABRA played at least some part in the students’ literacy gains. First, the students experienced the greatest gains in phonological awareness. According to the teachers, these were the skills they felt least prepared to teach and the ones for which they most used ABRA. Second and significantly, the gains

represented four months of learning; far above what would be expected over a ten week period of regular instruction.

At the end of the pilot study we sought teachers’ feedback about ABRA’s suitability for the Australian context. Teachers noted some instances where Canadian accents and pronunciation made the language unclear for Australian students, and most teachers thought that ABRA could be improved by adding Australian stories and characters. We sent a request to the CSLP in Canada for some small revisions, including the elimination of words that do not rhyme in Australian English and the addition of Australian stories (with Australian–accented audio) to the catalogue. CSLP completed the revisions before the start of the second year of the study.

The positive results of the pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of using ABRA in NT schools and justified moving to a quasi-experimental study in the following year.

In 2008 we conducted a pilot study to

establish the feasibility of using the ABRA

software in NT classrooms. We

observed how NT teachers would use

ABRA, assessed ABRA’s potential

impact on student literacy outcomes, and

investigated how we could feasibly provide

relevant classroom support in the NT context. We also

aimed to identify any potential problems

in the translation of ABRA from the

Canadian to the Australian setting.

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THE ABRA STUDY: Year 2Quasi-Experimental Study

In the second year of the ABRA project, we

conducted a quasi-experimental study.

Unlike the pilot study, this study included

a control group which allowed us

to compare literacy gains between

students whose literacy instruction

was complemented through ABRA

activities and those who learned without

using ABRA. Six schools (two urban,

two remote and two very remote)

participated in the study, carried

out during the first semester of

2009, with at least two classes from each school self-

selecting either to the intervention (ABRA

instruction) or to control conditions.

We initially tested 225 students, but with student turnover and absences during the second round of testing at the end of the semester, the final analysis included 166 students. More than half of all students were Indigenous.

We monitored student attendance as well as the quality of implementation and overall literacy instruction to determine whether these variables affected students’ literacy gains. In this way we sought to determine whether ABRA works best in ideal conditions (for high attending students who receive high quality instruction) or can compensate for less than ideal conditions by supporting some continuity and quality of instruction for students who attend infrequently and receive lower quality literacy instruction.

On average, Indigenous students attended less frequently than non-Indigenous students and therefore received less ABRA instruction. Variations in teacher implementation also meant some students received more ABRA instruction time than others. Results of the 2009 quasi-experimental studyIn the end of semester tests, ABRA students performed significantly better than control students on measures of phonological awareness, regardless of school location or teacher quality. Overall,

these results provided evidence that ABRA works to improve phonological awareness for students at both urban and remote schools who receive varying qualities of literacy instruction. This finding is especially promising in the light of international research that shows that direct instruction in phonological awareness is valuable for improving the reading and writing skills for disadvantaged students.

A limitation of the quasi-experimental study was the non-random allocation of classes to treatment and control conditions. Schools were permitted to choose which classes used ABRA and which would serve as the controls. Nevertheless, students from each group did not differ significantly in their age, attendance and initial test scores. Another limitation is that teachers of varying experience and skills delivered the ABRA intervention. While this increased the ‘naturalness’ of the study, it came at the expense of our ability to control the teaching environment.

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THE ABRA STUDY: Year 3Randomised Controlled Trial

findings available for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

We conducted the RCT during the first semester of the 2010 school year in 17 Transition to Year 2 classes in six schools located in Darwin, Palmerston and Alice Springs. We were unable to include schools from very remote locations in the study because of the financial and logistic challenges of placing, supporting and monitoring ABRA teachers in these contexts.

After initially testing the 354 participating students, we randomly assigned individual students from each class either to receive instruction using ABRA (with teachers we had employed specifically for this purpose), or to be in the ‘control’ group, that is, stay with their classroom teacher and receive non-ABRA-based literacy instruction. This random assignment addressed the main limitation of the second year NT ABRA study, in which students had not been randomly assigned to ABRA and control classes.

Students in the ABRA groups left their classes for 30-45 minutes 4 days a week over a period of 16 weeks to receive instruction through ABRA. Year 3 resultsThe RCT showed that regular instruction using ABRA is more effective than regular instruction

In the third year of the ABRA study we conducted

a randomised controlled trial (RCT), designed to

determine, by the highest standard of experimental research, whether using

ABRA caused gains in students’ literacy scores

above and beyond regular instruction. Specifically,

we aimed to find out if students who receive two hours of ABRA instruction

per week would have greater gains in early

literacy skills than students who receive equivalent

amounts of traditional literacy instruction. A

secondary aim of the study was to find out if ABRA

was especially effective for Indigenous students.

The RCT protocol was developed according to established clinical trial standards and was registered through the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR), the first social science project in Australia to be so registered. Registration through the ANZCTR holds the researchers publicly accountable to design, implement and analyse the research as planned and to make the research

alone in improving students’ phonological awareness and phoneme- grapheme correspondence skills. This finding was consistent across the schools in the study and among students of various ages. The difference in results between students who did and did not receive ABRA was such that one would expect teachers easily to be able to recognise it.

It seems promising that students receiving instruction with ABRA demonstrated greater gains in phonological awareness than the control students, as phonological awareness has been shown internationally to be an excellent predictor of outcomes at the end of primary education. Direct phonological awareness instruction is particularly important for improving the reading and writing skills of English language learners and disadvantaged children.

Although the study did not establish that instruction using ABRA had an effect on students’ reading scores, it is possible that the benefits of improved phonological awareness may take time to directly impact reading ability. A follow-up study would be needed to show whether this is the case.

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Case Study

In 2010, four schools took part in a case study to find out how teachers would be able to use and adapt ABRA in ‘naturalistic’ implementation conditions: that is, when receiving only minimal support from the research team as a reflection of the level of support that schools might ordinarily expect when asked to take up an innovation. Characteristically, teachers in the NT are introduced to a new teaching approach through a one- or two-day seminar, organised by internal or external trainers. The case studies also aimed to document how schools tackled the complexities of supporting teachers in new ways of teaching.

After a day’s training session, teachers used ABRA over one semester. They were asked to use ABRA as part of their usual literacy instruction for a minimum of 30 minutes at least four times a week. They used ABRA mainly in early childhood classrooms (Transition to Year 2), although in some sites they also used it as a remedial program with older students (Years 3 and 4). A researcher provided teachers with minimal support by visiting once each term, observing lessons and providing feedback on the planning, structure and content of the ABRA lessons, with advice on dealing with the technology. Teachers were also offered assistance through phone conferences and email.

As it was not feasible to visit the schools over prolonged periods, we used a combination of observational and other data gathering techniques to become quickly familiar with the teachers’ and schools’ practices and routines. We visited the schools over several days towards the end of the semester, in particular observing lessons and interviewing principals, teachers, assistant teachers and tutors to provide more in-depth information about how they perceived and used ABRA. We talked with three students from each class to find out what they liked or disliked about ABRA, and what they had learned from using ABRA.

Most teachers in the case study schools were positive about using ABRA, and several teachers were successfully integrating it into their overall literacy program. However, without regular support in the early stages, many teachers were using ABRA in ways that were less than ideal. Further, it was clear that ABRA was competing with a mix of teaching approaches within an already crowded schedule, making it difficult for teachers to prioritise their own skill development.

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Teacher Training and Support

“This programme has taught me many

different ways of integrating literacy activities within the classroom through

the use of technology. Having the support of

the researcher gave me a sounding board when

I had questions and also provided valuable advice to improve my

lesson delivery.”

For each of the first two years of the NT ABRA project, the participating teachers attended a one-day training session in the week before they began teaching with ABRA. Teachers in the second year of the study gave us feedback that they would have preferred more training time, and accordingly, in the third year of the study we extended the teacher training to run for five half days. Training covered the topics of catering for students with different abilities, integrating computers into literacy instruction, and classroom management when using computers. The training in the final year included a focus on the teaching of phonics and phonological awareness, as many teachers in the previous years had indicated they lacked confidence in this area of instruction. We also encouraged teachers to collaborate with one another in lesson planning to help ensure similar quality of lessons.

While teachers were using ABRA, we supported them through bi-weekly visits to their school, whether urban or remote. During first two years of the research we noted that teachers’ schedules were busy and tight and it was often difficult to fit in ABRA support time around other planned and unplanned school activities, particularly if teachers did not themselves have regular lesson planning times. We observed that allowing enough time during visits to meet regularly with teachers and to give feedback on lessons meant teachers were more likely to plan and experiment with ABRA.

While some teachers were more open to the coaching relationship than others, on the whole they indicated that they found this relationship to be extremely helpful.

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How Teachers used ABRA

Teachers used ABRA in a variety of ways, juggling available resources and computer space in their schools, combining the use of interactive whiteboards, LCD projectors (for whole class instruction), computer labs or classroom laptops. Some teachers used a ‘learning centre’ approach, with a small of group of children working on laptops for about 15 minutes and then rotating to other activities. Other teachers were obliged to work around a busy computer lab schedule, meaning that they had to split teaching between whole class lessons and allowing limited time for children to practice individually or in pairs at a computer.

We used observational protocols to help us evaluate whether teachers used ABRA well or not. We judged ABRA-based lessons to be most effective when• they were well planned with clear

objectives• they consisted of both whole class

instruction and small group or individual work

• children were organised to work at the level best suited for them

• the teacher used a range of materials in addition to ABRA and

• wherever possible, the teacher made good use of tutors or assistant teachers to help children individually.

We observed that teachers using ABRA were more likely than control teachers to teach phonics systematically, to cater for individual children and to conclude their lessons in ways that gave students time to reflect on what they had learned.

In 2010 we noted that the case study teachers, who had received comparatively limited training and almost no on-site support, often struggled to make connections between the ABRA activities and other aspects of their literacy program. Some of these teachers tended to use ABRA more for purposes of reward and diversion. This was particularly the case when they were faced with infrequently attending children who found it difficult to engage with more academic demands.

In contrast, we observed that the randomised controlled trial teachers, who had received an extended training and more systematic support, all gave lessons of a high quality and with a high level of creativity.

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What Teachers thought about ABRA

Throughout the three years of the study, teachers did make some consistent critiques of ABRA: they felt there could be more activities for younger children who have not yet mastered all the letters and sounds. They would have preferred a greater range of stories built in to the program. Most teachers said ABRA could be improved by adding Australian stories and characters. Teachers worried about managing the children when they were working on computers. It was often difficult to get children to focus on the intended activities, and not all students were capable of self-regulation or of understanding how to effectively challenge themselves and extend their learning.

On the whole, however, teachers found ABRA to be a good support for their regular instruction, reinforcing the content of their broader literacy program.

“Playing interactive and fun ‘games’ on a computer, the children don’t even realise that they are doing work, but they are developing skills that they need. It gives students another way to learn what I am teaching them.”Teachers also reported that ABRA helped some students who struggled or disengaged from learning during typical classroom instruction.

“Many of my students have had very poor success with school up until now so this has allowed them to have some better experiences and feel good about their abilities. ABRA has really helped with their listening and focusing in on sounds and instructions.”

Finally, teachers believed that ABRA supported children to be self-regulating and to extend themselves. Using ABRA also helped teachers to spend one-on-one time with students and to arrange students effectively in small ability-level groups.

“I’m so impressed with the students’ ability to independently log into

the program. Also, when I am occupied with another student if someone has a problem they can’t solve

another student will often volunteer to try and fix it.”

“I like the ways that kids can actually extend

themselves. We’ve got a little group of children who

challenge themselves quite often and learn

through that.”

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What students thought about ABRA

“I like the syllable counting game

because Leo feeds the yeti ice blocks for the number of syllables in each

word.”

We interviewed a minimum of three students from each ABRA class to find out what they thought about using ABRA.Most students said they were happy with ABRA and perceived it as play, games or fun. Many also said that they preferred using ABRA on individual computers, enjoying that they could work alone or with a friend at their own pace. They enjoyed the quirkiness of the characters and generally became very familiar with Julie and Leo, the two main characters who were in most activities.

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Key Findings

1. ABRA is feasible and effective across the NT context, provided that

• teachers are well-trained and supported professionally to use ABRA to its greatest effect

• ABRA is integrated into the overall literacy program

• it has reliable levels of technical support

• it is accepted by the teachers and the wider school community

• schools are properly equipped to deliver ABRA (e.g., with interactive electronic whiteboards, a sufficient number of computers for classes and reliable internet access)

2. The data gathered in the course of the three year study showed that using ABRA to complement an existing literacy program improves students’ phonological awareness and phoneme-grapheme correspondence to a greater extent than not using ABRA.

3. The data also showed that ABRA is effective with students who are from Indigenous or ESL backgrounds.

4. Despite some early apprehension, ABRA’s Canadian provenance was not problematic in the NT context.

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Future Research

1. Closer investigation needs to be made into how ABRA compares with other literacy resources and whether its impact would be magnified by a systemic scale-up. A longitudinal study would help assess the impact on later reading outcomes.

2. There needs to be research into what are the optimal conditions for teachers to integrate tools like ABRA into their balanced literacy program. These conditions include the nature and extent of training, continuing professional development and support; and the nature of the classroom dialogue through which teachers frame literacy instruction.

3. There needs to be further research into the use of technology with children who have special needs, including Indigenous children with hearing loss. This would help us to gain a better understanding of whether the use of technology is in fact effective and, if this is the case, what factors contribute to literacy gains.

4. Further questions include how teachers could more effectively embed technology into everyday teaching practice, rather than using it as an add-on activity.

5. It is important that future research also address the question of how best to disseminate research findings to teachers as well as to policy-makers and the wider research community.

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Recommendations

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On the basis of this study, we recommended that if ABRA is adopted by schools in the NT

• it should be used by teachers to support phonological awareness and letter sound knowledge

• it should be used at least twice a week for continuity and familiarity, for 30-40 minutes per day, for a total of between 20 and 30 hours over the year

• teachers using ABRA should be adequately trained, with at least one full day’s in-service professional development, and supported intensively with bi-weekly visits during the first three to four months of using ABRA

• regular professional development sessions addressing the integration of technological tools into the broader literacy curriculum would make teachers’ use of ABRA more effective.

We made some further recommendations relating to evidence-based research in education: • the kind of systematic

research used to evaluate ABRA should be considered both feasible and the minimal standard for generating evidence in regional and remote settings

• interventions in other areas of learning (particularly in maths and science) should be similarly studied

• research transfer should be seen as a critical element in the adoption of resources like ABRA

• the use of technology-based literacy interventions in comparable international Indigenous contexts should also be studied, with a view to better understanding the broad issues of implementing educational innovations in such settings.

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Useful Links

The Centre for Child Development and Educationwww.ccde.menzies.edu.au

The ABRACADABRA softwarehttp://grover.concordia.ca/abracadabra/promo/en/index.php

MENZIES SCHOOL OF HEALTH RESEARCHPO Box 41096, CASUARINA NT 0811

John Mathews Building (Building 58) Royal Darwin Hospital Campus,

Rocklands Drive, CASUARINA NT 0810 Phone: 08 8922 8196

Facsimile: 08 8927 5187Web: www.menzies.edu.au

Email: info@menzies.edu.au

Discovery for a healthy tomorrow