Dr. Dean Arrasmith, Chief Learning Officer
Celeste Crosse, M. Ed.


We met John the first day we gathered at school with our group of students. Earlier we had asked first and second-grade teachers to identify students who were struggling to learn to read. They identified several students; John was among the group.

While we believed we could help the students learn to read, we wanted to test our lessons and instructional content to see if the students would be interested in the several lesson modules, relate to the game-like computer activities in each lesson, find the entire package interesting, and actually learn to read. In our first two months with the students, we read, played reading games, and managed many behavioral problems. While our creative technical staff developed the computer applications, we needed to develop confidence in the lessons. Much of what we did was in paper copy and conducted as small group instruction.

John was an interesting student. He was an engaging second-grade student. He was lively and likes to be a leader of the group. It was hard not to like John. As we focused on each student’s reading needs, it became evident that John could not read. He had difficulty identifying specific letters in words, counting words in a sentence, and identifying specific very simple words. He did not understand the concept of print, truly a struggling reader.

Unfortunately, John knew he was struggling. After a simple sight word game, he asked me, “Why am I always the last one to find the word?” To protect himself, John developed several behaviors to mask his difficulty reading. When working with John, he often delayed responding to reading questions and tasks to hear how other students or the teacher responded. Then he uses his usual catch phrase, “Oh, I get it.” and parroted the response. He used finger movements on a page to show he was reading the words, even though his eyes were fixed on the teacher’s eyes, his finger randomly moving on the page. He used disruptive behaviors or withdrew from the activities when he became frustrated.

We assessed the students within each lesson, a strategy of the StudyDog curriculum. While many of the students mastered sounds of letters and identified word families, John did not seem to understand the lessons. Learning was competitive for John. He had to do better than the other students did, but was unable to keep up. His frustration continued to show in his behavior. When the StudyDog development team completed electronic lesson modules, we literally rolled out the computers. Bringing computers to the school twice each week, we took small groups of students through each of our Level 1 lessons. On average, we completed two lessons each thirty-minute period. Students shared responding to the lesson activities, helping each other decide which response was correct. Earning StudyDog points became competitive between the groups of students.

Interest in the computer activities overcame many of the students’ behavioral problems. We had less disruptive behaviors. John became engaged in the lessons. He found letters in words, and saw and heard words in sentences read aloud to him. He heard and selected letters of onset sounds, found rhyming words, and learned very basic sight words.

In order to track each student’s performance on the computer, they each completed a pre- and post-tests of oral comprehension and various vocabulary skills. The students were asked to listen to an oral story and answer questions predicting what the story was about and answering both literal and inferential questions. Vocabulary tests focused on onset and rime sounds, sight words, word families and phonemically regular words. John scored 25% correct on the pre-test. His score was within the range of chance. After two months of computer instruction using StudyDog curriculum, he scored 74% correct on the post-test.

His teacher commented on the growth John has made in reading this school year. Using Running Records at the beginning of school and in February, she reported strong development in basic reading skills. He understands the concept of print, he can sound-out simple words, he has a growing sight vocabulary, and he is gaining confidence in his reading. Obviously, he is not yet an independent reader. He has many more reading skills to master. While he is gaining confidence, he continues to focus on his reading development and not so much on how far behind he is in comparison to his classmates.

John has made tremendous gains in learning to read. Equally important, he is learning to approach his reading more openly and honestly. We have seen fewer behaviors that originally masked his lack of reading skill. He still gets frustrated, but often he tries harder rather than give up. We are optimistic for John that he will continue to approach reading in a positive and successful way, improving his image of himself as a strong reader. StudyDog was the right solution for him.