Using whole-word multimedia software to

support literacy acquisition: A comparison

with traditional books
Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley
Abstract
In the UK, literacy instruction is widely supported by computer software programs aimed to improve
literacy skills. However relatively few systematic studies have been conducted to date to investigate whether
these programs are effective in supporting literacy acquisition. Programs range in nature from those supporting the acquisition of phonic reading skills to those focussing on promoting recognition of whole-words in
context. Whilst phonic skills have been shown to be critical for successful reading acquisition, less is known
about how promoting orthographic, whole-word, skills relates to literacy success. This study investigated
whether whole-word multimedia software (i.e. Oxford Reading Tree for Clicker) facilitates literacy acquisition. We explored whether Clicker accelerated early reading acquisition relative to Big Book traditional
teaching methods. Two groups of children (N  27), aged 56 years, that were reading at a typical level for
their age were drawn from two classes within the same school. Each group received instruction with each of
two books from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme, using either Clicker or traditional printed texts. Instruction was delivered to each group over five one-hour sessions over the course of a week. The order of presentation of instruction was counterbalanced across groups. Performance on tests of written word recognition, oral
word reading, and tests of phonological awareness, was measured pre and post each week of instruction.
Results showed significant gains in oral reading skill after each method of instruction. However, only after
instruction with Clicker were significant gains in word recognition and rhyme awareness observed, and
only after instruction with Big Book were significant gains in graphemic awareness found. We
suggest the multimedia features of highlighting words and an auditory cue, built into the Clicker software,
support the acquisition of written word recognition and rhyming skills, respectively.

ITERACY INSTRUCTION in primary

schools and at home in the UK and elsewhere (e.g. Europe, USA, Australia, New
Zealand) is now widely supported by computer software programs, such as on-screen
story books/electronic books (e-books), aimed
to improve literacy skills. However, there is
substantial variation in the content of e-books
that claim to support the development of literacy skills in terms of phonological awareness,
word recognition, and fluency. Consequently
it is difficult for educators and parents to distinguish high quality e-books that genuinely
promote literacy acquisition from those that
are less effective. Furthermore, the multimedia features incorporated into e-books are
numerous and vary greatly across products
such as digitised speech, hotspots, text

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

The British Psychological Society 2008

highlighting whilst reading aloud, animations,

sound effects, dictionary features, and activities and games. Thus, it is difficult to know
which features are effective in developing the
skills needed for literacy acquisition.
Content analyses of e-books (aimed at
38 year old children) have been conducted
to investigate whether or not they are suitable for supporting childrens literacy. De
Jong and Bus (2003) reviewed the content of
e-book CD-ROMs comprising at least one
oral reading of the story, although the
CD-ROMs varied in the inclusion of other
additional content such as multimedia
features (e.g. oral reading, dynamic visuals,
highlighting while text is narrated and
sounds effects) and varied in their permitted
level of interactivity. They divided CD-ROMs
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Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

into three subtypes: talking books (which
comprised a minimum of multimedia and
interactivity); living books (which involved
multimedia combined with minimal interactivity), and interactive books (which combined multimedia features and interactivity).
From their analysis, they concluded that
high-quality e-books should comprise multimedia and interactive features that are
designed to support all aspects of literacy
development, such as word recognition and
story comprehension. In another review,
Korat and Shamir (2004) suggested that
more effort should be put into designing
high quality e-books that facilitate childrens
literacy development and story comprehension than in designing amusing and entertaining programs.
E-books may be beneficial in promoting
literacy acquisition because the activity of
reading aloud a story by an accomplished
reader to a young child is recognised to be
crucial in promoting literacy development
(Teale, 1981, cited in Miller, Blackstock and
Miller, 1994). In the classroom, storybooks
are often read aloud to an entire class at a
pace set by the teacher. In contrast, e-books
enable stories to be read aloud to individual
children (or small groups of children), thus
allowing the child to determine the pace of
delivery that suits their own particular needs.
In addition, e-books provide correct pronunciation of words, and offer feedback as often
as the child requires, and some highlight the
words as they are being spoken. These features of e-books may advance reading skill
acquisition over traditional teaching methods, although, to date, there has been little
systematic investigation into which of these
features are important for supporting the
development of literacy skills and the cognitive processes involved.
Evidence from previous research suggests that reading acquisition involves two
key processes: (1) the establishment of
orthographic, whole-word recognition skills
that enable familiar words to be recognised
rapidly and (2) the development of
phonological decoding skills that enable
98

unfamiliar words to be read via letter-sound

correspondence rules (e.g. Castles & Nation,
2006). In addition, phonological awareness
(i.e. awareness of the sound structure of a
language) has been shown to be a significant predictor of successful reading acquisition (e.g. Adams, 1990; Shankweiler &
Fowler, 2004). Phonological awareness
refers to the ability to identify, distinguish,
and manipulate the sounds of a language
and the awareness that words consist of
smaller units such as phonemes, onsets and
rimes, and syllables. Phonological awareness
develops progressively through a childs
exposure to and participation in spoken
language, for example playing word games,
such as I spy, and learning nursery rhymes.
However, it has also been shown that reading development itself, and in particular
the acquisition of letter-sound knowledge,
correlates with the development of phonological awareness (e.g. Ehri, 1989; Morais,
1991; Mann & Wimmer, 2002). As such, the
direction of causality between phonological
awareness and literacy acquisition is debated
(Castles & Coltheart, 2004). Accordingly, the
use of e-books in the teaching of learning to
read may promote phonological awareness
skills in developing readers.
The few studies investigating the effectiveness of e-books in promoting the development of orthographic, whole-word
recognition and phonological decoding
skills have yielded inconsistent findings. For
example, Miller et al. (1994) compared the
development of whole-word recognition
skills in 8-year old children who were asked
to read repeatedly a story (5 times) given
over two and a half weeks, via CD-ROM storybooks and hard-covered printed books. They
found that whole-word recognition skills
increased considerably after repeated readings of the CD-ROM storybooks. Children
relied less frequently on the word pronunciations of unfamiliar words given by the
computer after every reading and requested
a reduced amount of computer help compared to the printed books activity. Although
promising, these results should be treated
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ICT support for literacy instruction

with caution, as a very small sample size of
only four children was used and so it is
unclear whether or not these results would
generalise to a wider sample of children.
Likewise, McKenna and Watkins (1994,
1995, 1996, cited in McKenna, 1998), found
exposure to e-books supported development
of word-recognition skills over typical literacy instruction. They compared the wordrecognition skills of children that were
exposed to e-books with children that
received their usual literacy classroom activities. Children in the e-book group were able
to access the pronunciation of a word in the
text (e.g. hat) and would first get an analogy
and then the pronunciation (e.g. lets see, if
c-a-t is cat, then h-a-t must be [pause] hat,
page 48). This was to encourage independent decoding so that children would tackle
the analogy instead of receiving the pronunciation of a word immediately. Results
showed that the children in the e-book
group that had already developed some
word-recognition skills exhibited significant
gains in word recognition compared to the
control group. This suggests that e-books
may be effective in promoting orthographic
(whole-word) reading skills in children that
have already started to establish a lexicon of
written word representations.
In contrast, Korat and Shamir (2007)
reported no gains in written word recognition and phonological awareness after using
e-books compared to traditional printed
texts. They investigated the effectiveness of
e-books compared to traditional literacy
methods in which a similar version of the
book was read aloud by an adult. A group of
128 children, aged 56 years, were randomly
assigned to one of three intervention
groups: (1) an experimental group in which
children read the e-book individually three
times; (2) an experimental group in which
the traditional printed book was read by an
adult to the children three times; and (3) a
control group in which children received
standard literacy instruction. The authors
found improved spoken vocabulary scores in
the two intervention groups compared to the
Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

control group, however no significant gains

were found in whole-word recognition and
phonological awareness in the intervention
groups compared to controls. The authors
suggested that they might not have found
significant gains in written word recognition
after the e-book intervention because the
software did not emphasise activities with the
key words in the text that were included in
the word recognition test. They suggested
adding activities to e-books that fostered the
familiarity of printed words and that taught
the pronunciation of key words included in
the text. If these activities were included in
e-books significant gains in written word
recognition may be found.
Contrary to Korat and Shamir (2007)
multimedia software has been shown to benefit childrens phonological awareness. Chera
and Wood (2003) found that talking books
based on the Bangers and Mash phonic
reading scheme (published by Longman,
1999) supported development of phonological awareness. A group of 4-year-old children
(n  15) received ten software interventions
over a period of four weeks. Each intervention lasted ten minutes and was presented
with a typical inter-intervention period of
three days. In contrast, a control group
(N  15), matched for age, gender and level
of letter sound knowledge received their
normal reading activities. Significant gains in
phonological awareness reflecting awareness
of letter sounds and word onsets (as measured by a visual letter sound task and a visual
onset awareness task) were found in the
intervention group relative to the control
group. However, no significant gains in
whole-word recognition skills were found
despite an attempt to incorporate activities
supporting reading by analogy.
Ultimately, the goal of learning to read is
to understand written text and to be able to
communicate with others the nature of the
text through retelling. Labbo and Kuhn
(2000) conducted a case study examining
the comprehension and story-retellings of a
child in which they manipulated the extent
to which the interactive multimedia features
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Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

of the CD-ROM talking books were congruent to the story being told. They compared
two CD-ROM storybooks: Arthurs Teacher
Trouble (Brown, 1994) with inconsistent (or
what they termed inconsiderate) text
(where 56 per cent of media effects were
incongruent to the story) and Stellaluna
(Cannon, 1996), with consistent (which they
termed considerate) text (where only 16
per cent of media effects were incongruent
with the story). They found that consistent
talking books contributed to a good understanding and retelling of the story. Consequently, they suggested that when the
purpose of a CD-ROM is to facilitate
childrens reading development, the interactive features should be logical and congruent
with the story, so that it will support the
childs understanding of the story. However,
Korat and Shamir (2007) found no significant differences in the story comprehension
of children after interventions using either
an e-book or a traditional book. Thus, as
with the development of whole-word recognition and phonological decoding skills,
there is no convincing evidence that e-books
facilitate the understanding of written text
over and above traditional printed texts.
The inconsistent pattern of results from
studies investigating the effectiveness of
e-books in supporting childrens literacy
instruction in the classroom that are summarised above make it difficult to draw firm
conclusions about what advantages children
gain from using multimedia software (Littleton, Wood & Chera, 2006). This may be
because results are dependent on the nature
of the specific multimedia e-books used in
particular studies and thus do not readily
generalise to other products. Seemingly, the
effectiveness of a particular e-book depends
on many factors, including quality, aim and
purpose, the features incorporated in the
book, the activities accompanying the text,
and how the child uses it. Furthermore,
gains in performance may depend on the
length, frequency, and timing of intervention, and the nature of the comparison
groups (i.e. traditional printed book inter100

vention compared to no intervention

controls). As a result, it is difficult to disentangle the extent to which the results from
previous studies reflect methodological differences from the effects specific to e-books
or particular reading schemes.
Furthermore, methodological differences
across studies make comparison difficult. For
example, studies vary in the chronological
age and reading age of children and these
groups are often not differentiated when
evaluating the effectiveness of e-books.
Sample sizes differ dramatically across studies
[e.g. from only four children in Miller et al.
(1994) to 128 children in Korat and Shamir
(2007)]. When studies adopt a small sample
size statistically meaningful differences may
not be detected due to lack of statistical
power. In addition, studies vary in methodological approach, and whilst experimental
designs have more control over confounding
variables, they may lack the ecological validity
of those carried out in classroom settings.
Also, studies differ with respect to assessment
issues, such as the baseline measures conducted, whether or not standardised tests
were used, and whether or not a control
group was used. Finally the duration of interventions vary across studies and few investigate how lasting the intervention effects are
over time.
In an attempt to unravel the effects of
ICT from a particular reading scheme, the
present study contrasted an intervention
using e-books to an intervention using traditional printed books, with materials from
the same reading scheme. We examined the
effectiveness of Oxford Reading Tree (ORT)
for Clicker, multimedia software designed
to promote orthographic whole-word recognition skills. This series of on-screen talking
books is based on the Oxford Reading Tree
scheme, which is used in a large number of
primary schools across the UK. ORT for
Clicker is produced by Crick Software and
Oxford University Press and comprises five
CDs, on each of which there are six onscreen stories. Key features include an
auditory cue (each word is spoken by a narEducational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

ICT support for literacy instruction

rator) and the highlighting of words when
spoken by the narrator. In addition, there
are a wide range of reading and writing activities based on the story and its key words.
The stories are graded in stages from 1 to
5 and children progress from one stage to
the next. The reading scheme suggests that
at the end of Year 1 (6 years of age) children
should have reached stage 5 (Hunt and
Page, 2003).
Using a counterbalanced within-participants intervention design, two groups of
Year 1 children (Group A and Group B)
from the same school, with average reading
levels for their age, were each given a week of
intervention using ORT for Clicker and traditional ORT Big Books (big books are a
large form of the regular sized book that
teachers use for whole class teaching). For
both interventions children performed
accompanying activities incorporated in the
software/reading scheme that were similar
in content across interventions. The two
interventions thus differed primarily in the
multimedia features embedded within ORT
for Clicker, in particular the visual highlighting of words as spoken by the narrator and
the audio cue which provides correct pronunciation of unfamiliar words upon request
by the child. The development of key
processes required for reading acquisition
was assessed at three times, both pre and
post test for each intervention. Whole-word
recognition skills were assessed using a lexical decision task. Written word naming was
assessed using a single word oral reading
task. Finally, phonological awareness was
assessed using tests of rhyme awareness,
grapheme awareness, and segmentation
skill. If the visual highlighting and audio cue
features incorporated in ORT for Clicker
facilitate literacy acquisition, specific gains in
written word recognition and naming skills
may be expected by average readers following exposure to the multimedia software.

Method
Design
A within-participants design was used in
which two groups of typically-developing
children, rated by their teachers as being of
average reading ability, were each given two
interventions (traditional printed ORT Big
Book and ORT for Clicker). Each intervention was implemented over a five-day week,
for one hour every day. To control for order
and practice effects, an AB-BA counterbalanced design was used across the two groups
of children that were drawn from two different classes within the same school. The study
was conducted over five weeks in which
children were assessed on key measures of
literacy skill in the week before and after
each week of intervention. Table 1 summarises the study design: during intervention I Group A received the ORT for Clicker
intervention whilst Group B was given the
Big Book intervention; during intervention
II Group A received the Big Book intervention whilst Group B was given the ORT for
Clicker intervention.
Participants
Twenty-seven children, ranging in age
between 66 and 77 months (M  71.56
months; SD  2.86), were selected from two
different classes within the same school.
All of the children were at the educational
level Year-1, key-stage 1. Participants were
Week 1

Pre Test Assessments (baseline)

Week 2

Intervention I: Strawberry Jam

Group A: ORT for Clicker
Group B: Big Book

Week 3

Post Test Assessments Intervention

I/ Pre Test Assessments
Intervention II

Week 4

Intervention II: Kipper the Clown

Group A: Big Book
Group B: ORT for Clicker

Week 5

Post Test Assessments Intervention II

Table 1: Summary of the study design

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Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

recruited from a large Catholic primary
school near a metropolitan city centre in the
East Midlands region of England. The
school is located in a low socio-economic
status area, however the proportion of pupils
that receive free school meals is in line with
the national average (Ofsted Inspection
Report, 2006).
Informed parental consent was obtained
in line with the British Psychological Society
guidelines. Although the teachers identified
38 children as typically-developing readers,
parental consent was given for only 27
children to participate in the study. Consequently, Group A (n  15) consisted of 6
boys and 9 girls, ranging in age from 66 to 75
months (M  70.67 months; SD  2.61) and
Group B (n  12) consisted of 5 boys and 7
girls, ranging in age from 69 to 77 months
(M  72.67 months; SD  2.87).
Intervention materials
During each of the intervention weeks a
story from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme
was given to each group of children and the
method of implementation was varied across
groups. This meant that as one group
received the traditional printed book version the other group received the ORT for
Clicker on-screen talking book version and
vice versa. Two different stories from the
Oxford Reading Scheme were chosen, one
for each week of intervention, that are suitable for Year-1 children. For each story a Big
Book printed version is available that is an
enlarged version of the traditional sized
printed book. The Big Book supports and
enables working and reading as a wholeclass activity and was used by the class teachers in the whole class activities conducted
during the Big Book intervention. An ORT
for Clicker version is also available for each
story that is produced by Crick Software
(2006). These are on-screen narrated
versions of the story (i.e. a talking book). In
the ORT for Clicker version each word in
the story is highlighted in red, whilst spoken
aloud by the narrator. Both versions
(i.e. printed book and talking book) are
102

identical in text and are 16 pages long. Each

story in the ORT for Clicker version is supported by six activities named words, word
practice, sentences, comprehension,
writing and make a book (i.e. retelling
the story either through the written or
spoken modality). Teaching notes, which
provide prompts, suggestions, and activities,
supported the traditional version. In the
present study, the ORT for Clicker version
activities and the traditional version activities were similar (see Appendix A and B).
The following stories were used in this study
over the two intervention weeks.
Intervention I: Strawberry Jam (Hunt &
Brychta, 2003). This story is about Dad who
wants to make jam. The story gives practice
in the following words: about, an, had, help,
his, home, make, over, put, ran, some, time,
too, took, want(ed), were, your.
Intervention II: Kipper the Clown
(Hunt & Brychta, 2003). This story is about a
group of children who put on a circus. It
practises the following words: after, be, did,
good, had, his, laugh, made, man, pull(ed),
put, want(ed), what.
Apparatus
The Clicker intervention consisted of a
whole class session led by the teacher using
ORT for Clicker (Version 5.2) on a SMART
Interactive whiteboard. This was followed
by Clicker activities, which each of the average readers performed individually on a
laptop computer (Toshiba M300) with
attached mouse and headphones. The Big
Book intervention consisted of a whole class
activity in which the teacher read the Big
Book to the class. For the children in the
intervention group this was followed by
individual activities using pen, paper and
regular sized ORT books. Two of the pre
and post test assessments were computerised tasks and were given on a laptop
computer (Toshiba M300) under the
control of Eprime Version 1.1. The other
three assessments were given orally and the
experimenter recorded the responses on a
standardised form.
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ICT support for literacy instruction

Assessments
A series of assessments, designed to measure
development of key aspects of literacy skill,
was given to each child on three occasions,
both pre and post test for each of the two
interventions (see table 1).
Written word recognition. A lexical decision
task (LDT) was used to assess written word
recognition skills. Stimuli were displayed on
a PC laptop screen controlled by E-Prime
software. The task required the child to indicate, by way of pressing one of two keys on
the keyboards (i.e. the C and M keys),
whether or not a centrally presented letter
string was a word that was familiar to them. If
the letter string was familiar to the child they
were instructed to press the C key, which was
covered with a green sticker. If the letter
string was not familiar to the child they were
asked to press the M key, which was covered
with a red sticker. Children were given task
instructions that were displayed on the laptop screen and were read aloud by the
experimenter. The task was administered
according the following instructions: Spot the
words you know! I am going to show you some
words on the computer screen. If you see a word
that you know, you press the green button. If it is a
word that you dont know, you have to press the red
button. I will ask you if you are ready and then you
have to push the button. So the green button for a
word that you know and the red button for a word
that you dont know. Are you ready? A practice
task was then given, containing 10 letter
strings (five words and five nonwords), so as
to familiarise the child with the task. This was
repeated until the experimenter was sure
that the child understood the task, after
which the first trial was presented. For each
trial a fixation display () was presented centrally on the screen for 500 ms. A lowercase
letter string was then presented centrally and
remained on the screen until the child had
responded by pressing either the red or
green key. Feedback was given for each trial
by way of a happy face presented on the
screen when the child responded correctly
(i.e. green key press when the letter string
Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

was a word; red key press when the letter

string was a nonword) and a disappointed
face when the child made an erroneous
response (i.e. green key press to a nonword;
red key press to a word). The feedback lasted
until the experimenter pressed the P button
that triggered a new trial. The experimenter
only initiated a new trial when she was sure
that the child was focused.
In total, 90 experimental trials were given
to each child over three blocks of 30 trials.
Each block consisted of 10 practice trials
(the same practice trials were used in each of
the three blocks of trials) followed by one
block of 30 experimental trials in which 15
letter strings were real words and 15 were
nonwords. This was to prevent boredom with
the task and to ensure that each child
finished all of the experimental trials. Each
block took about seven minutes to complete.
Children were given a break in between
blocks of trials, of up to one day. Stimuli were
presented in a randomised order within and
across blocks and across participants.
Responses were recorded by the computer.
Stimuli were lowercase letter strings presented in 28-point black Comic Sans font
against a white background. The stimulus set
consisted of 90 letter strings, of which 45
were real words and 45 were nonwords. The
45 real words were drawn from a bank of
words that the children were learning over
the first three years of schooling. Five words
were taught during Reception and should
thus have been familiar to the children.
These words were included so as to try to
prevent floor effects. A further 25 words
were taken from the two stories from the
Oxford Reading Tree scheme that were used
in the interventions. These were the high
frequency words targeted by the scheme (see
above). An additional 10 words were
included that were being taught to the
children over Year-1 (the year of schooling in
which the study took place). A further five
words were included that are taught during
Year-2 and should thus have been unfamiliar
to the children. These words were included
so as to control against ceiling effects. The
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Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

full list of words included in the lexical
decision task is given in Appendix C. The 45
nonwords were generated from the 45 words
by changing some of the letters in the real
words. All nonwords were pronounceable
and were matched to the real words in
length and familiar letter sequences. A list of
the nonword stimuli is given in Appendix C.
Written word naming. A single word oral
reading task (SWORT) was developed to
assess naming of written words. The task
required the child to read aloud each of the
45 word stimuli used in the lexical decision
task. The stimuli were presented individually
on a PC laptop screen. Task instructions
were displayed on the laptop screen and
were also read aloud by the experimenter.
The task was administered according the following instructions: I am going to show you
some words on the computer screen. Lets see how
many you can read. Read them out loud to me.
For each trial a fixation display () was presented centrally on the screen for 500 ms. A
lowercase word was then presented centrally
and remained on the screen until the child
had read the word aloud. The experimenter
responded by pressing either the Y or N key,
depending whether the childs response was
correct (Y) or incorrect (N). Stimuli were
presented in lowercase 28-point, black,
Comic Sans font, against a white background. Stimuli were presented individually
in a randomised order across participants.
Phonological awareness. Three subtests of the
Phonological Awareness Test (PAT) (Robertson and Salter, 1997) were administered to
each child according the standard instructions given in the test manual. The three
subtests were rhyming, segmentation, and
graphemes. Rhyming consisted of two tasks:
discrimination (i.e. the childs ability to identify whether or not two words rhyme, e.g. do
hop & mop rhyme?); and production (i.e.
the childs ability to generate a word that
rhymes with a spoken word, e.g. what rhymes
with cat?). This subtest consisted of 20 items
in total. Segmentation consisted of three
104

tasks: sentences (in which the child was

required to clap to each word in a sentence
spoken by the experimenter); syllables (in
which the child was required to clap to each
syllable in a word spoken by the experimenter); phonemes (in which the child was
required to say each sound of a word spoken
by the experimenter). This subtest consisted
of 30 items in total. Graphemes assessed
knowledge of letters and letter combinations
and their corresponding sounds. In this task
the child is shown a written letter
(grapheme) and is required to say the corresponding sound (phoneme). The test consists of consonants (e.g. b, c, k); long and
short vowels (e.g. a, e, i, o, u); consonants
blends (e.g. bl, gr, sc, str); consonants
digraphs (e.g. sh, th, ch); R-controlled vowels
(e.g. ar, er); vowel digraphs (e.g. ee, oe); and
diphthongs (e.g. ou, oy). There was a total of
58 items in this subtest.
Procedure
Each intervention was implemented with
each group over the duration of five consecutive days (i.e. one full school week). The
class teacher of each group delivered each
intervention for one hour each day during
the literacy hour. Every literacy hour consisted of a 15 minutes shared work activity
(delivered to the whole class), a 15 minutes
word/sentence level work activity (delivered to the whole class), a 20 minutes
focus activity (which involved individual
work with the intervention activities), and a
10 minutes plenary session (delivered to the
whole class).
The shared work (whole class) activity
involved the teacher exploring and reading
the story with the whole class. During the Big
Book intervention this involved reading the
Big Book story in front of the class and
encouraging the children to look at the
words and pictures and to read it aloud with
the teacher (see Appendix A). The ORT for
Clicker intervention involved the teacher
reading the story on the interactive white
board whilst encouraging the children to
look at the pictures and highlighted words
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ICT support for literacy instruction

and the children to read the words aloud
whilst spoken aloud by the narrator (see
Appendix B). The word/sentence level
work (whole class) activity focused on a particular part of reading (e.g. grammar and
punctuation, vocabulary, or spelling). During each intervention this involved activities
such as spotting mistakes in sentences, making a word bank (i.e. a list of the high frequency words used in the story), creating
new sentences with the target words, and
completing sentences on the board (Big
Book) or on the interactive white board
(Clicker). The focus activity involved activities at the word-level, sentence level and
comprehension. During the Big Book intervention children used traditional books,
pencil and paper to complete these activities
on an individual basis. During the ORT for
Clicker intervention children worked individually through a CD-ROM activity, created
by Crick Software and Oxford Reading Tree,
using PC laptops. For each intervention
these activities involved identifying spelling
patterns, reading and matching words,
becoming familiar with word order, writing
simple sentences, answering questions based
on the story content, and recognising and
reading high frequency words either in the
printed book (Big Book) or through listening and finding them on the PC screen
(Clicker). In the plenary session (whole
class), the teacher went over what was taught
during the literacy activity. A more detailed
overview of the activities undertaken by the
children during the two interventions is
given in Appendices A and B.
Pre and post test assessments were
administered on an individual basis, in a
quiet area free from distraction, over several
short sessions, each lasting about 15 minutes.
The first author administered most of the
assessments, with the help of two other
experimenters, in the weeks prior to and
after Intervention I, and after Intervention
II. The lexical decision task was given first,
followed by the three tasks of phonological
awareness (i.e. the subtests of the PAT), and
finally the single word oral reading task. The
Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

typical interval between each assessment was

one day.

Results
Group data were tested for homogeneity of
variance. Significant skewness was revealed
in the scores for the literacy tests indicating
substantial departures from normality and
thus non-parametric analyses were used.
Mann-Whitney tests were used to investigate
between-group differences at the first assessment period (i.e. baseline) to see if the two
groups differed in performance on each
measure of literacy development prior to the
interventions. Within-subjects analyses were
then conducted across the three assessment
periods for each group, for each of the
measures of literacy skill, using Friedman
tests. When significant in order to establish
where significant changes in performance
occurred, pairwise comparisons were conducted using Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests.
Results of these analyses are summarised in
Table 2 where all tests are reported at a twotailed level of probability. Effect sizes were
also calculated for each group following the
Clicker and Big Book interventions, using
Cohens d (Cohen, 1988), so as to assess the
magnitude of the intervention effects. These
are reported in Tables 3 and 4 along with
mean performance for each group.
Written word recognition
For the lexical decision task correct identification of words and nonwords (total correct
out of 90) for each child was calculated then
mean performance for each group was
determined (see Table 3). To investigate if
the two groups differed in pre-intervention
ability a Mann-Whitney U test was conducted
on mean performance at Time 1 (baseline).
Descriptive statistics showed that Group A
children (median  60) performed better at
baseline than Group B children (median 
54). However, this difference was not significant (U  57, z  1.14, p  .253). For each
group a Friedman Test was conducted to
explore differences in performance across
the three assessment periods during which
105

Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

Task

Time 1 vs 2 vs 3

Time 1 vs 2

Friedman test
LDT

Group A
Group B

SWORT

Group A
Group B

Rhyme

Group A
Group B

Segmentation

Group A
Group B

Graphemes

Group A
Group B

 6.9
p  .05
2  5.09
ns*
2  15.45
p  .001
2  19.24
p  .001
2  13.03
p  .001
2  6.74
p  .05
2  1.19
ns
2  .61
ns
2  6.19
p  .05
2  4.33
ns
2

Time 2 vs 3

Time 3 vs 1

Wilcoxon signed ranks test

z  2.23

z  1.72

z  2.4

p  .05

ns

p  .05

z  .51

z  1.74

z  1.96

ns

ns

p  .05

z  1.38

z  2.94

z  2.88

ns

p  .01

p  .01

z  1.49

z  3.06

z  3.06

ns

p  .05

p  .05

z  2.39

z  1.1

z  2.81

p  .05

ns

p  .05

z  1.9

z  1.51

z  2.26

ns*

ns

p  .05

z  .14

z  .92

z  .45

ns

ns

ns

z  .55

z  .47

z  .1

ns

ns

ns

z  1.54

z  2.39

z  2.33

ns

p  .05

p  .05

z  1.94

z  .69

z  2.54

ns*

ns

p  .05

Table 2: Summary of within-subject analyses conducted to assess the effects of each intervention
across the three assessment periods. Significant results are given at two-tailed level of probability;
*Refers to results that are significant at one-tailed level of probability

Task
LDT

Group A

Max. 90
Group B
SWORT

Group A

Max. 45
Group B

Time 1

Time 2

Time 3

Clicker

Big Book

Mean (sd)

Mean (sd)

Mean (sd)

Effect size

Effect size

.51

.18

.37

.12

.11

.32

.21

.45

59.30 (12.2)

65.70 (13.1)

68 (12.9)

(66%)

(73%)

(76%)

56.33 (8.9)

57.42 (9.3)

60.92 (9.8)

(51%)

(64%)

(68%)

25.20 (12.4)

26.70 (13.8)

31 (13.1)

(56%)

(59%)

(69%)

19.33 (13.2)

22.08 (13.4)

28 (13.2)

(43%)

(49%)

(62%)

Table 3: Mean raw scores correct (standard deviations) and effect size for each group, for the lexical
decision task (LDT) and single word oral reading test (SWORT). Mean percentage correct given in
parenthesis below
106

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

ICT support for literacy instruction

Task

Time 1

Time 2

Time 3

Clicker

Big Book

Mean (sd)

Mean (sd)

Mean (sd)

Effect size

Effect size

15.58 (4.6)

17.83 (3.1)

18.42 (3.2)

.58

.19

78%

89%

92%

17.33 (3.7)

18.25 (2.6)

18.75 (2.6)

.19

.24

87%

91%

94%

Segmentation Group A

19.50 (3.9)

19.17 (4.1)

20.25 (4.5)

.08

.25

Max. 30

65%

64%

68%
.04

.02

.14

.25

.09

.28

Rhyme

Group A

Max. 20
Group B

Group B
Graphemes

18.92 (4.1)

19.08 (4.2)

19.17 (4.2)

63%

64%

64%

Group A

35 (8.11)

36.08 (7.6)

38 (7.8)

60%

62%

66%

Group B

34 (10.3)

36.92 (10.7)

37.92 (10.5)

59%

F64%

65%

Max. 58

Table 4: Mean raw scores correct (standard deviations) and effect size for each group, for the subtests
rhyme, segmentation and graphemes from the PAT. Mean percentage correct given in parenthesis below
the two interventions were given. Results
(given in Table 2) revealed a significant difference only for Group A. Paired comparisons using Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test
showed significant gains only during the
Clicker intervention. In contrast, for Group
B the Friedman Test was not significant,
however, it is clear from table 3 that Group
B children showed greater improvements
following the Clicker intervention (mean
gain  3.5 words) than after the Big Book
intervention (mean gain  1.1 words) consistent with the pattern of results shown by
Group A. Table 3 reports effect sizes for
each group following each intervention.
Medium effect sizes were found for
the Clicker intervention whereas small
effect sizes were found for the Big Book
intervention. At the end of the study both
groups showed significant gains in performance after each group had received both
interventions.

determined (see Table 2). Descriptive statistics showed that Group A children
(median  31) performed better at baseline
than Group B children (median  22),
however, this difference just failed to reach
significance (U  47, z  1.93, p  .053).
Within-subject comparisons (see Table 2)
revealed a significant difference across
assessment periods for Group A and paired
comparisons showed significant gains only
after the Big Book intervention (see Tables 2
and 3). A significant difference in performance across the three assessment periods was
also found for Group B and paired comparisons showed a significant improvement
during the Clicker intervention. Table 3
shows that small effect sizes were found for
the Clicker intervention whereas small to
medium effect sizes were found for the Big
Book intervention. Furthermore, by the end
of the study both groups showed significant
gains in performance.

Written word naming

For the single word oral reading task correct
reading aloud of words (total correct out of
45) for each child was calculated, then
mean performance for each group was

Phonological awareness
For the rhyming subtest of the PAT, correct
discrimination and production of rhyming
words (total correct out of 20) for each child
was calculated, then mean performance for

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

107

Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

each group was determined (see Table 4).
Descriptive statistics showed that Group A
children (median  17) performed marginally poorer at baseline than Group B
children (median  19), although this difference was not significant (U  59, z 
1.301, p  .212). Friedman Tests (reported
in Table 2) showed a significant difference
for both groups, however paired comparisons only significance for Group A after the
Clicker intervention. Effect sizes for each
group (given in Table 4) revealed small to
medium effect sizes after the Clicker intervention, whereas small effect sizes were
found for the Big Book intervention. Again,
by the end of the study both groups had
made significant gains in performance (see
Tables 2 and 4).
For the segmentation subtest of the PAT,
correct segmentation of sentences, syllables
and phonemes (total correct out of 30) for
each child was calculated, and mean performance for each group was determined
(see Table 4). Although Group A children
(median  21) performed better at baseline
than Group B children (median  18.5)
this difference was not significant (U  69.5,
z  .749, p  .454). Friedman Tests showed
no significant difference across assessment
periods for both groups (see Table 2). Table
4 shows effects sizes were small for both the
Clicker and Big Book interventions.
For the graphemes subtest of the PAT,
correct knowledge of letters, letter combinations, and their corresponding sounds (total
correct out of 58) for each child was calculated. Mean performance for each group is
reported in Table 4. At baseline Group A
children (median  37.5) performed at a
similar level to Group B children (median 
37) (U  73.5, z  .543, p  .587). Withinsubject comparisons across the three assessment periods (reported in Table 2) showed a
significant difference for Group A only, and
paired comparisons showed significant gains
were made only following the Big Book intervention. Although not significant, it is clear
from Table 4 that Group B children also
showed greater gains following the Big Book
108

intervention than after the Clicker intervention, consistent with the pattern of results
shown by Group A. Small effect sizes were
found for both interventions. As with the
other measures significant gains in performance were found at the end of the study.
Summary of results
Significant gains in performance were found
across the study, from baseline (time 1) to
the final assessment (time 3), for each measure of literacy skill investigated, except for
segmentation ability (as measured using a
subtest of the PAT). Thus, after receiving
both interventions childrens written word
recognition, written word naming and
phonological awareness skills had significantly improved. These gains could arise
from childrens reading development that
typically occurs over time under literacy
instruction with the Oxford Reading Tree
scheme or could imply familiarity with the
test items used that benefited from practice
effects because of repeated administration.
Importantly, significant gains were found for
each type of intervention on certain measures that cannot be attributed to practice
effects because of the counterbalanced
design. Specifically, the ORT for Clicker
intervention led to significant gains in written word recognition and rhyme awareness,
whereas the Big Book intervention produced
significant gains in graphemic awareness.

Discussion
This intervention study explored whether the
multimedia features of ORT for Clicker facilitated childrens literacy acquisition to a
greater extent than the regular printed books
used in the Oxford Reading Tree scheme. As
the stories used across the two interventions
were counterbalanced and the accompanying activities were highly similar this enabled
us to test directly the key multimedia features
(i.e. the auditory and highlighting cues)
incorporated in the e-book version of the
scheme, that are not present in the regular
printed texts. Thus, any differences in performance gains after each intervention could
Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

ICT support for literacy instruction

thus be attributed to the presence or absence
of these features.
Results showed that the Clicker intervention led to significant gains in written word
recognition, supporting our prediction that
exposure to the multimedia features built
into the ORT for Clicker software would
facilitate the processing of whole-words. This
is consistent with previous studies that have
found gains in word recognition after using
e-books (Miller et al., 1994; McKenna &
Watkins, 1994, 1995, 1996, cited in McKenna,
1998). However, significant improvements in
word recognition have not been found by
some studies that have investigated the effectiveness of e-books (Chera & Wood, 2003;
Korat & Shamir, 2007). Methodological
differences across studies may account for
these contradictory findings. For example,
we used a lexical decision task to investigate
orthographic processes utilised in written
word recognition. This task is typically used
by researchers to investigate orthographic
processing (see Andrews, 2006) and requires
the participant to decide whether a letter
string is a word that they know or not. Performance of this task involves matching a letter string to a lexical entry represented in
the orthographic lexicon. If the letter string
is a familiar word it will automatically match
the corresponding lexical representation.
However, if the letter string is unfamiliar,
there will be no lexical entry and the participant will decide the item is a nonword.
In contrast, Korat and Shamir (2007)
used a test of single word reading in which
the children were required to read-aloud
nine words that appeared frequently in the
e-book they investigated. Likewise, Chera
and Wood (2003) used the British Ability
Scales test of single word reading (Elliot,
1983). However, reading aloud single words
is not a pure test of written word recognition
skills as words with consistent letter-sound
mappings (i.e. regular words) can be read
successfully using sublexical, phonological,
decoding skills. Thus, studies that have used
tests of oral reading to infer word recognition skills should be treated with caution.
Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

This is also illustrated in our own data.

Although we found significant gains in performance on the lexical decision task following the Clicker intervention, significant gains
on the single word oral reading task were not
found, even though both tasks used the same
word stimuli. Observations made by the
experimenter (first author) of the strategies
used by the children when performing this
test revealed that children appeared to use a
combination of both decoding skills and
whole-word recognition skills when attempting to read aloud the 45 words. This highlights the need for studies investigating the
development of written word recognition
skills to adopt pure measures of orthographic
processing, such as a lexical decision task.
The significant gains in written word
recognition found in our study following the
Clicker intervention shows that the ORT for
Clicker software promoted childrens ability
to recognise and discriminate words from
nonwords closely matched for orthographic
structure. It is likely that the multimedia feature incorporated in Clicker of highlighting
words as they are spoken aloud by the narrator might have supported improvements in
written word recognition skill, by drawing
attention to the visual form of words.
We also investigated the effects of the two
interventions on the development of phonological awareness skills. Even though the two
interventions compared in this study both
used a whole-word reading approach to literacy instruction it has been hypothesised that
development of reading skills, in particular
letter-sound knowledge, correlates with
improvement in phonological awareness
skills (e.g. Ehri, 1989; Morais, 1991; Mann
& Wimmer, 2002). We were able to test this
prediction by comparing childrens performance on the three tasks of phonological
awareness (rhyme awareness, segmentation
skill, and graphemic awareness) used in our
study from the standardised Phonological
Awareness Test. Results revealed significant
gains in performance on the rhyming subtest
of the PAT, but only for Group A children.
This does appear to reflect a genuine Clicker
109

Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

effect, however, as rhyme awareness was only
practiced in the intervention activities during the first intervention week (in which the
story Strawberry Jam was given, see Appendices A and B). This confound was unavoidable when using the Oxford Reading Tree
scheme, as the associated activities for Strawberry Jam included practicing rhyming,
whereas this activity was not given with the
other story (Kipper the Clown) used in our
study. Interestingly, when Group B were
given Strawberry Jam through the Big Book
intervention and the associated paper and
pencil rhyming activity, they also showed
gains in rhyme awareness that approached
significance. This suggests that the rhyme
activity associated with the Strawberry Jam
story of the Oxford Reading Tree scheme
facilitated childrens rhyme awareness and
that the ORT for Clicker software boosted
rhyme awareness significantly, perhaps
because of the auditory cue given by the software throughout the activity.
Significant gains in graphemic awareness
were also found but interestingly after the Big
Book intervention, which may have arisen
from the teacher explicitly emphasising (via
pointing) component graphemes of unfamiliar words and blended them into the corresponding spoken words when reading the
story aloud to the class. The experimenter
observed the teachers engaging in this practice only during the Big Book intervention.
To conclude, our study shows that visual
and auditory cues can be effective in facilitating the development of different literacy
processes. The multimedia features included
in the ORT for Clicker software seemed to be
beneficial in supporting written word recognition skills and rhyme awareness respectively.
Likewise, the practice adopted by teachers
of pointing to individual graphemes and

110

blending their sounds into spoken words

when using Big Book appeared to support
development of graphemic awareness. Seemingly, drawing attention to particular aspects
of words or subword units, such as rimes or
graphemes, whilst engaging in literacy tasks
(such as listening to books being read aloud
or participating in word games) serves to promote particular aspects of literacy skill, irrespective of the medium in which it is
delivered. These effects were apparent in our
study even after just one week (5 hours) of
instruction using each intervention. ICT has
the potential to exploit the use of cues to a
greater extent than do traditional teaching
methods, as different multimedia features can
be built into software and used interactively by
children, enabling them to progress through
programs at their own pace. Thus, carefully
designed e-books, such as ORT for Clicker,
seem to be an effective means of supporting a
childs individual literacy learning.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Ann Crick of Crick
Software for her ideas and suggestions.
We also thank the staff and students of
St. Teresas Catholic Primary School for participating in the study and Maria Ktori and
Sue Kempston for their help with data collection. This research was supported by
an ESRC Case PhD studentship awarded to
Dr. Nicola Pitchford and Professor Claire
OMalley (grant number PTA-033-200400064).

Address for correspondence

Arjette Karemaker, School of Psychology,
University of Nottingham, University Park,
Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK. Tel: 44 (0)
115 8468188; Fax: 44 (0) 115 9515324
E-mail: lwxamk@psychology.nottingham.ac.uk

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

ICT support for literacy instruction

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112

Monday

Before Reading:
Look at the cover. Ask the
children to predict what they
think the book is about.
Read the title and talk
about whether the book is
going to give facts about
strawberry jam or tell a story.
During Reading:
Begin to read Strawberry
Jam. Ask the children to read
the story with you. Praise and
encourage them while they
read, and prompt as necessary.
Point out capital letters, full
stops, and speech marks
(wave, point to nose, etc.).
Stop reading on page 9
when the car is locked.
What happens next?

Shared work

Teacher Class
Word/sentence work
Focus group
Write the word had on the
Ask the children to think of
board. Ask the children to
words that begin with the
think of other words ending
same sound ha- but with
in the sounds -ad, e.g. Dad,
different final sounds, e.g.,
bad, sad.
hat, ham, has.
Which of these 3 options
Write the words in two lists.
rhyme with Dad?
The words that begin with
sad sat sack
the same sound ha- and
bat bad bag
the words that end with the
glad glum grab
same sound -ad (already on
mat map mad
the board).
Write sentences about Dad
using the rhyming words to
describe them.

Appendix A: Big book intervention teacher tables

for average reading children
Plenary
Look at the word Dad again
(page 1) and ask the
children to remember the
words that rhyme with it
(like in the word/sentence
work). They can make up a
word if they want to but it
has to rhyme.
Look at the word put
(page 7) and think of
words that rhyme with it.

Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

 Children take turns to roll a

dice. They have to find (and
read aloud) a word in the
story with that number of
letters, and then they have
to come up with a rhyming
word. When everyone has
had a turn at rolling the
dice, ask the children to find
the longest word.

Put the word cards on the

table: about, an, had, help,
his, home, make, over, put,
ran, some, time, too, took,
want(ed), were, your. Read
aloud the words and let
them pick the matching
words while taking turns.
Ask the children to make
sentences using the words.

Write on the board the

following words: bat,
bag, bad, map, mad, mat,
sad, sat, sack, grab, glad,
glum.
Find the words that rhyme
with Dad.
Why do those words rhyme
and not the other words?

Make a word-bank of unfamiliar vocabulary read so far

(strawberry, pick-your-own).
Discuss meaning and say
each word aloud. What
sounds can you hear at the
beginning and end of the
words?

Before Reading:
What happened in the story
yesterday?
Encourage the children
to tell the story through
what is happening in the
pictures.
During Reading:
Continue reading book.
Ask the children to read the
story with you.
Praise and encourage them
while they read, and prompt
as necessary.
Point out capital letters, full
stops, and speech marks
(wave, point to nose, etc.).

Reading:
Encourage the children to
tell the story through what
is happening in the pictures.
Ask the children to read the
story with you.

Tuesday

Wednesday

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

(Continued)

Re-cap meaning of words.

How can we use it in a
sentence?

Re-cap rhyming of words.

What do rhyming words
have in common?

ICT support for literacy instruction

113

114

Friday

Thursday

Look at the pictures of the

story and ask the children to
tell the story.

Read the story with the

children. Go back to page 4,
ask the children: what sort
of place is called pick-yourown?
What difference do the
hyphens make when you
read this word?
Ask the children to point
out any other word they
know with hyphens in them.

Talk about what happened

at the beginning, in the
middle and at the end of the
story.

Write the following sentences on the board. Ask the

children to spot the mistake
and correct it.
Dad wanted make to jam
He strawberries picked
some.
They picked strawberries all.
Chip the strawberries to
the car took.
The children had an cream
ice
It was time to home go.
Look at the printed book
and ask the children to make
up other questions about the
story (individuals or pairs).

Ask the children to rearrange

the sentences on the word
cards (work individually) to
make correct sentences.
Write them down on the
small white boards (sentences
are also on the big white
board)
Discuss each others sentences whether they are
right and what and why it
should be changed.

Sequence the pictures into

beginning, middle & end.
Answer the questions that
are made in the focus
groups.

Re-cap and discuss the word

order of the sentences that
the children have written on
the small white boards.

Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

Tuesday

Monday

Before Reading:
What happened in the story
yesterday?
Encourage the children
to tell the story through

Shared work
Before Reading:
Look at the cover. Ask the
children to predict what they
think the book is about.
Read the title and talk about
whether the book is going to
give facts about strawberry
jam or tell a story.
During Reading:
Begin to read Strawberry
Jam. Ask the children to read
the story with you. Praise and
encourage them while they
read, and prompt as necessary.
Point out capital letters, full
stops, and speech marks
(wave, point to nose, etc.).
Stop reading on page 9
when the car is locked.
What happens next?
Write on the board the
following words: bat,
bag, bad, map, mad, mat,
sad, sat, sack, grab, glad,
glum.

Teacher
Word/sentence work
Write the word had on the
board. Ask the children to
think of other words ending
in the sounds -ad, e.g. Dad,
bad, sad.
Which of these 3 options
rhyme with Dad?
sad sat sack
bat bad bag
glad glum grab
mat map mad
Show and explain the
children the activity
WORDS on the ICT board
(Grid activity 1 & 2)

Start the activity WORDS on

the computer. (Words 3 & 4).
Encourages children to identify rhyming words and relate
them to spelling patterns.

Class
Focus group
Start the activity WORDS
on the computer. (Words 1
& 2)
Encourages children to
identify rhyming words and
relate them to spelling
patterns (focus on words
containing the rime ad).
Match words to the pictures,
click on empty cell to open a
pop-up grid and choose the
word that rhymes with Dad.
Write sentences about Dad
using the rhyming words to
describe them.

Appendix B: Clicker intervention teacher tables

for average reading children

(Continued)

Re-cap rhyming of words.

What do rhyming words
have in common?

Plenary
Look at the word Dad again
(page 1) and ask the
children to remember the
words that rhyme with it
(like in the word/sentence
work). They can make up a
word if they want to but it
has to rhyme.
Look at the word put (page
7) and think of words that
rhyme with it.

ICT support for literacy instruction

115

116

Thursday

Wednesday

Write the following

sentences on the board. Ask
the children to spot the
mistake and correct it.
Dad wanted make to jam.

Make word-bank of unfamiliar vocabulary read so far

(e.g. strawberry, pick-yourown).
Discuss meaning and say
each word aloud. What
sounds can you hear at the
beginning/end?
Show and explain the
children the activity WORD
PRACTICE on the ICT board.

Reading:
Encourage the children to
tell the story through what
is happening in the pictures.
Ask the children to read the
story with you.

Read the story with the

children. Go back to page 4,
ask the children: what sort
of place is called pick-yourown?

Find the words that rhyme

with Dad. Why do those
words rhyme and not the
other words?
Show and explain the
children the activity WORDS
on the ICT board (Grid
activity 3 & 4)

what is happening in the

pictures.
During Reading:
Continue reading book.
Ask the children to read the
story with you.
Praise and encourage them
while they read, and prompt
as necessary.
Point out capital letters, full
stops, and speech marks
(wave, point to nose, etc).

Start the activity SENTENCE

LEVEL on the computer.
The activity encourages
children to recognise that
words are ordered from left

Start the activity WORD

PRACTICE on the computer.
Encourages children to
recognise and read on sight
a range of high frequency
words that appear in the
story.
Click on the speaker button
to hear the target word. Listen to the word and find it
on the screen. If the child is
correct, the word button will
change colour.

Re-cap and discuss the word

order of the sentences that
the children have written on
the computers.

Re-cap meaning of words.

How can we use it in a
sentence?

Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

Friday

to right and need to be read

that way to make sense.
The start screen introduces
the sentences. Click on each
picture to open a pop-up
grid, which shows the
sentences.

Start the activity

COMPREHENSION on the
computer.
This activity encourages
children to show an
understanding of main points
of the story, by answering
simple questions. (Click on
the picture to hear the
question.)

He strawberries picked
some.
They picked strawberries all.
Chip the strawberries to
the car took.
The children had an cream
ice
It was time to home go.
Show and explain to the
children the activity
SENTENCE LEVEL on the ICT
board.
Talk about what happened
at the beginning, in the
middle and at the end of the
story.
Show and explain the
children the activity
COMPREHENSION on the
ICT board.

What difference do the

hyphens make when you
read this word?
Ask the children to point
out any other word they
know with hyphens in them.

Look at the pictures of the

story and ask the children to
tell the story.

Sequence the pictures into

beginning, middle and end.
Answer the questions that
are made in the focus
groups.

ICT support for literacy instruction

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3

117

Arjette Karemaker, Nicola J. Pitchford & Claire OMalley

Appendix C: Word stimuli used in the

lexical decision task and the single word
oral reading task and matched nonwords
stimuli in the lexical decision task
Reception words

Oxford Reading Tree

intervention words

Year-1 words

Year-2 words

Words

Nonwords

Words

Nonwords

Words

Nonwords

Words

Nonwords

and

ind

about

abond

bed

det

yellow

yelter

they

thim

an

en

his

hin

eight

teigh

big

cag

had

dal

more

moso

where

whust

see

teeg

help

welk

then

wesb

wednesday

wednesdau

said

faip

these

thamp

118

home

wame

were

lere

make

mage

once

kon

over

ovel

night

yatoe

put

pid

some

shom

ran

rop

came

hame

time

bime

down

drot

too

noo

took

hoos

want

nand

wanted

wented

your

yurt

after

dawoe

be

ob

did

tul

good

harc

laugh

healt

made

yade

man

mun

pull

grel

pulled

heapel

what

whut

Educational & Child Psychology Vol 25 No 3