Boulder Language Technologies

Contextualizing Language, Literacy, Science, Math and Social Studies for English Language Learners

By Ron Cole and Corby Connolly

Project Team:
Corby Connolly, Ron Cole, William Devine, Nattawut Ngampatipatpong, Vanessa Schatz & Jariya Tuantranont

Project Overview:

Flying-Volando is a multimedia learning program designed to help all children, but especially those with limited English language skills, acquire reading and vocabulary skills while learning the concepts required to succeed in science, math and social studies in kindergarten through fifth grade. Flying-Volando is a unique and powerful program that combines the best features of scientifically-based reading instruction, whole language approaches to reading, and the cognitive theory of multimedia learning. Flying-Volando represents our vision of a new generation of computer-based learning tools that combine the key features of immersive, individualized, scientifically-based reading instruction (as incorporated in Foundations to Literacy ), while simultaneously accelerating learning of key concepts in academic subjects.

In Flying Volando, students master the foundational skills needed to decode words accurately and fluently, learn the vocabulary needed to read and/or comprehend the books they encounter in the program, and simultaneously learn facts and concepts linked to ongoing classroom activities. The goal is to help students become proficient readers and successful students. We believe this can be achieved by integrating interactive and individualized reading experiences with interactive and individualized multimedia learning experiences. The program jointly optimizes learning to read and learning academic content by associating the text of stories presented in interactive books with illustrations and multimedia flash animations that are accompanied by narrations or songs. The design and presentation of the reading materials is based on cognitive theory and scientifically-based reading research, while the design of multimedia presentations is based on the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, described below. These principles of reading and learning are applied within an engaging 16 chapter story begins in the U.S. and ends in Mexico. As discussed below, the Flying-Volando adventure story plays a critical role in the program by providing a context for making all learning activities and concepts relevant and important to the student and for learning about the connections between concepts in science, math and social studies.

The Program

Flying-Volando was designed and implemented by Ms. Corby Connolly, a teacher in Boulder Colorado at Sanchez Elementary school for English as a Second Language (ESL) and Spanish as a Second Language (SSL) small group instruction. Flying-Volando was first published in 1994 as a 16 Chapter 4 Big Book series of dramatically recorded, song filled, language-acquisition program. The adventure's storyline features Gita, a spunky, young Monarch caterpillar, and Mr. Crow, a friendly black crow who helps her escape an early snowstorm in the north by giving her a ride to sunny Mexico on his back. Once there, the journey continues as they search for the place her family, the Monarch Butterflies, have migrated to for the winter. The adventure is orchestrated to give teachers and parents a framework for exploring geography, science and other social and conceptual understandings within the premise that learning is increased when the elements of fun, imagination and emotional involvement exist. In this original format, the Flying-Volando program is used by teachers and students in a small number of schools and homes in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, California and Mexico City, Mexico.

Inception of Flying-Volando Intelligent Tutoring System: In 2003, Ms. Connolly was introduced to the CSLR's FtL program when it was first piloted in Sanchez elementary school. Soon after learning about and observing the Flying-Volando program, Dr. Cole invited Ms. Connolly to present the Flying-Volando program to CSLR's research staff. For the past two years, Ms. Connolly has continued to work with CSLR in the capacity of consultant, designing a storyboard that features the Flying-Volando characters and content, songs and illustrations combined with the software functions of CSLR's tutor supported interactive book layout. This work has led to a conceptualization of a new program, Flying-Volando ITS, which incorporates Foundations to Literacy learning exercises into the Flying-Volando stories, and integrates multimedia presentation and comprehension training to teach science, math and social studies and math in the context of the Flying-Volando adventure. During the summer of 2006, Ms. Connolly worked full time with William Devine and Vanessa Schatz to complete development of all materials and activities incorporated in the first chapter of Flying Volando. In addition, science, math and social studies concepts taught in Flying-Volando were mapped to Colorado science standards, and flash animations were developed for many of these topics.

Within Flying-Volando ITS, the Chapter serves as the focus for students to work through a series of 6 (20-30 minute) modules, or sessions. Each chapter follows the same instructional format, albeit with different content and learning goals, thus providing students with comfort, familiarity and a consistent user model with identifiable and achievable learning goals. Within each chapter, each session contains a formulaic variety of components that allow students to observe good reading strategies, practice using them initially with intensive virtual tutor support and then more independently with a lesser amount of tutor prompting. Each chapter also serves as a vehicle for learning new vocabulary and for exploring concepts about Science, Social Studies, Math and Language Arts. Each chapter takes about two weeks two complete, covering the approximately 32 weeks of a school year.

The work conducted to date has led to (a) the conceptualization and planning of an entire 16-Chapter program that links each Chapter's content and language/learning objectives to a standards-based year long curriculum map, and (b) development of a complete set of interactive books for chapter 1 of the Flying-Volando ITS program. We are now working to extend these books to incorporate vocabulary instruction, multimedia presentations of new concepts in science, social studies and math, and Spanish language support. In addition, the proposed work will integrate, within a single study plan, the appropriate foundational reading skills exercises from the FtL program for Chapter 1. The result of this effort will be an initial, "feature complete" prototype of the Flying-Volando ITS system. We hope to have an initial version of Flying-Volando ITS ready for testing in schools in September 2007.

Organization of activities in Flying-Volando ITS Chapter 1: Here we summarize the set of activities, organized in six sessions of about 20 minutes each, that have been developed for chapter 1. We note that Chapter 1 sessions together will span about two hours of time on task, with another 90 minutes to two hours of time on task devoted to foundational reading skills exercises taken from FtL, and including time required to view the progress graphic and receive rewards and verbal reinforcement within the program.

We note that all Flying-Volando ITS chapter sessions (except foundational reading skills exercises) involve interaction in the context of an interactive book, as shown in the figures below. All sessions are individualized and highly interactive, as the virtual tutor (now called Marina, see figures below) provide instructions, asks questions, and provides different responses (positive feedback, hints, encouragement) depending upon the choice the student makes using the mouse to click on pictures or words.

While Chapter 1 is described below for a beginning reader, the study plan will be designed so that each Chapter and its associated multimedia presentations, leveled readers and foundational reading skills exercises are designed to accommodate students at different language and literacy levels. For example, a beginning reader will have stories narrated and engage in shared (alternate or simultaneous) reading while receiving (in the proposed program) foundational reading exercises in alphabet names in sounds. A more advanced reader would receive the same content, but might read the book out loud, with Spanish and English language support available, while learning decoding and sight word skills in foundational reading exercises. Thus, the same story will provide the context for individualized learning experiences to children with different skill levels.

Teaching Literacy and Language in Flying Volando

Flying-Volando ITS Chapter 1, Session 1 introduces Marina, the virtual tutor, and Gita the caterpillar, and describes how learning to read requires practice with letters and the sounds they make. It includes a Concept Book entitled "Life Cycles" (see section below on science animations), a shared reader that features new vocabulary and background knowledge about plant and animal life cycles; Picture Walk, a level A reader that presents basic concepts about print and takes them on a guided walk through the pictures featured on each page, and The Little Caterpillar 1, a level A reader with same pictures as the Picture Walk book that has the student interact with a small amount of picture-supported, predictable text on each page. Fig. 1 shows examples from these books.

Concept book: Life Cycles	Picture walk	The Little Caterpillar 1

Figure 1. Examples from books in Session 1.

Session 2 includes Chapter 1, Part 1, a shared reading of the first half of Chapter 1, which includes the first song (Fig. 6). It also includes The Little Caterpillar 2, a level A reader with new vocabulary, a new sight word (as with every leveled reader) and a patterned sentence that is very predictable; and The Little Caterpillar 3, a level A reader with new vocabulary, a new sight word and a patterned sentence that is picture supported. Fig. 2 shows examples from these books.

The Little Caterpillar 2	The Little Caterpillar 3

Figure 2. Examples from books in Session 2.

Session 3 includes Chapter 1, Part 2, a shared reading of the second half of Chapter 1, which includes a second catchy song, and leaves the main character in a cliff-hanging predicament, She Eats 2, a level A-B reader that continues to cue students in the use of successful reading strategies, and She Eats 3, a level A-B reader that continues to build on ideas and themes from the previous leveled reader and the Chapter as a whole. Fig. 3 shows examples from these books.

She Eats 2	She Eats 3

Figure 3. Examples from books in Session 3.

Session 4 includes a new Picture Walk, and leveled A-B readers She Grows 1 and She Grows 2, which continue the story while introducing more basic concepts about print, while linking vocabulary in text to pictures through interactive activities that involve mouse clicks in response to questions. Fig. 4 shows examples from these books.

Picture Walk	She Grows 1	She Grows 2

Figure 4. Examples from books in Session 4.

Session 5 continues the story with level B readers It Snows 1, It Snows 2 and It Snows 3, which introduce students to variations in text and learn new vocabulary. Fig. 5 shows examples from these books.

It Snows 1	It Snows 2	It Snows 3

Figure 5. Examples from books in Session 5.

Session 6 presents Chapter 1 as a whole, including all the text and both songs, providing a review and a shared, supported re-reading of the Chapter. Fig. 6 shows examples from this book.

Figure 6. Examples from Chapter 1, presented in Sessions 1-6.

This is followed by Word Review, a short book that gives the student a chance to review all the sight words from the previous leveled readers. Fig. 7 shows examples from this book.

Figure 7. Examples from Word Review in Session 6.

Teaching Science, Math and Social Studies in Flying Volando

The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning: The results of research conducted by Richard Mayer and his colleagues at UC Santa Barbara provides clear guidelines for designing multimedia presentations to optimize learning of science concepts. The theory and research leading to these guidelines is summarized in the book Multimedia Learning. One of the most important results to emerge from this work is that scientific concepts can be presented most effectively through narrated animations. People learn best when they are able to view a series of illustrations or an animation that is accompanied by a spoken explanation of the concepts presented visually at the same time. Mayer's work, replicated and extended by a number of independent researchers, show that simultaneously presenting a sequence of illustrations or an animation with simultaneous spoken explanations of the concepts presented in the visual displays results in deep learning as demonstrated by the improved ability of individuals' to transfer the knowledge acquired to new problems. In Flying Volando, science, math and social studies contexts are presented as narrations accompanied by illustrations and animations. Once concepts have been presented in this way, students also read texts that explain these concepts and contextualize them within the story line.

The Power of One-on-One Tutoring: In addition to presenting science, math and social studies concepts in optimal ways, Flying-Volando is designed to facilitate learning through engaging and effective interaction with Marina, the virtual tutor. Over two decades of research have demonstrated that one-on-one tutoring or small group instruction is the most effective technique for helping people learn. In a landmark series of studies conducted in the early and mid 1980s, Benjamin Bloom and his students compared learning in classrooms to learning of the same content during one-on-one or small group instruction. They observed what has come to be known as the "two sigma" effect; performance of students receiving individualized instruction was approximately two standard deviations better than students receiving classroom instruction. They found, in a series of experiments comparing individualized instruction to classroom instruction for different academic subjects and students of different ages, that in general, a typical student who would receive a C on an exam following classroom instruction would receive an A on the same exam following individual instruction. Flying-Volando is designed to provide individualized instruction by Marina, the virtual tutor. The nature of this instruction is based on cognitive theories of learning. In addition to providing explanations of visual displays, Marina continuously assesses the student's comprehension of concepts, and provides hints and explanations to help them master them. For younger children, children respond to questions that measure concepts by clicking on objects in a picture, or clicking on a choice of words or pictures presented on a separate screen. Marina provides informative feedback to incorrect choices, and may also present a hint or ask another question that promotes thinking that may lead to a correct answer. For older children, the program presents multiple choice questions on a separate screen, with the option provided to the child of having Marina say the question and each of the four response choices. The response choices are carefully designed to assess comprehension, e.g., by presenting a reasonable but incorrect alternate explanation. Marina responds to each response choice made by the student by expanding on correct answers and provides hints and explanations to incorrect ones. Our research with the Foundations to Literacy program shows that children find these interactions to be engaging; over 9 of 10 children report that they like being asked questions by the virtual tutor, and 98% of over 300 children surveyed say that they believe responding to questions helps them learn.

Contextualizing Learning: The third characteristic of science, math and social studies instruction in Flying-Volando is our focus on contextualizing all of the concepts presented in each academic content area. We contextualizing learning in three ways: by making concepts relevant and important to the adventure story, and by helping students learn about the connections between the science, math and social studies concepts. For example, when Gita the caterpillar meets crow, she is freezing because of an early winter storm. Crow offers to take her to Mexico to look for her Monarch butterfly family. This opens the way for future presentation of concepts about seasons, metamorphosis, navigation and families, among others. Throughout the 16 chapter book, science, math and social studies concepts are presented in ways that make real and relevant the importance of concepts in each area and the connections between them. The figure below shows the distribution of science and social concepts presented across the 16 chapters of the story.

Figure 8. 16 chapter book, science, math and social studies concepts

Examples of Interactive Multimedia in Flying Volando

Since June 2006, Corby Connolly has been working with 3D digital animator William Devine and Vanessa Schatz to develop and integrate narrated flash animations into interactive books within the Flying-Volando program. Below we present "screen shots" of these animations, with a brief explanation of the associated animation. The complete narrated flash animation is presented for the "Water Cycle" (Water Cycle in narrated flash animation version or Water Cycle in song version ).