Goal: The goal of the Interactive Word Knowledge E-Book (WKe-Book) is to improve comprehension monitoring and student outcomes using engaging reading technologies.
Purpose: The purpose of this research is to develop and test a vocabulary and word knowledge intervention that also supports comprehension monitoring for third, fourth and fifth graders, who have weaker comprehension and vocabulary skills, through the use of interactive electronic books.
- One of the most frequent reasons that students fail to understand what they read is that they do not know the meaning of critical words (Beck & McKeown, 1991) and do not go back to figure out the meaning of the passage when they do not understand.
- This intervention is designed to improve their word knowledge, their ability to monitor their understanding, and to teach them what to do when their comprehension breaks down because they do not know what certain words or passages mean.
In our first book, The Dragon’s Lair, is about a boy whose magic unicorn can take him on different adventures of his choosing. Students get to name their own characters:
Comprehension questions are embedded in the story to encourage students to think carefully about the text and to use comprehension monitoring strategies such as using context clues to figure out the meaning of difficult target words:
The story also utilizes a choose-your-own-adventure format so students can decide what happens next:
Students’ data is logged so that we can carefully measure reading patterns. Students are also given brief assessments prior to and after completing the book to measure growth. Additionally, students meet weekly with research partners to discuss the book and comprehension monitoring strategies.
In our current study, preliminary data has shown that the WKe-Book is a promising and effective tool for teaching new words and comprehension strategies. We have just received an IES grant to continue this work. We plan to develop 4 new WKe-Books that also aim to teach science and social studies content knowledge starting in late 2017.