Running Head: THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 1

The Effects of Technology on Phonics and Fluency

Ian Ross

Franciscan University of Steubenville

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When planning for instruction, teachers are craftsmen. They come to school with a

toolbox filled with strategies and activities tailored to reach every student. In the new era of

technology, students come to school already technologically literate in many devices (i.e. iPads,

iPhones, laptops). The fact that students are engaged while using technology for games and fun

should entice teachers to use that zeal for engagement in education. In earlier grades, the literacy

classroom is an appropriate place for this engagement. Teachers can fill their toolboxes with

devices, applications, and technological materials that can help facilitate students’ learning of

reading.

One area of reading where this would be beneficial is fluency, which is “the ability to

read quickly, accurately and with a natural intonation” (Veenendaal, Groen, & Verhoeve, 2015).

A student’s reading fluency level is an indicator of their comprehension abilities and the main

goal of reading instruction is comprehension (Veenendaal, Groen, & Verhoeven, 2015).

Therefore, teachers should attempt to include as many fluency instruction strategies as possible

in their toolboxes. Another reading skill where technology can assist student learning is in

phonics. According to Henbest and Apel (2017), phonics is the ability of students to match the

individual sounds of words (i.e. phonemes) to their corresponding written symbols (i.e.

graphemes). Research on phonics has shown that the most effective way to teach this is through

explicit instruction (Henbest & Apel, 2017). This is another opportunity for reading teachers to

implement technology into their lessons. I find this to be an attractive topic as a preservice

teacher because I want to be able to adapt to my students’ current academic level as well as

understand where they feel most comfortable learning. By researching the most effective ways

to implement technology into phonics and fluency instruction, I aim to find the best way to make

the learning experience as meaningful as possible for students.

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Purpose

When implementing technology in the classroom, it is essential to select tools that are

going to be beneficial to student learning. There are myriad of applications, programs, and

devices on the market today and as a preservice teacher, it is important to select those that will

supplement reading lessons in a manner that will maximize student learning. Through this action

research project, I will examine multiple uses of technology such as applications and programs

and select one to use with a student to determine how effective it is in their acquisition of

phonics and fluency skills. Through this research, I aim to answer the question, “How can

technology be used to benefit student learning in phonics and fluency skills?”

I am currently taking Reading Diagnosis and Assessment at Franciscan University of

Steubenville. For this class, I am sent to a public school in the Ohio Valley to tutor a first-grade

student in reading. The program I use is Success for All (SFA), which targets phonemic

awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The student I am paired with is on

the first tutoring plan which addresses phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency. It is a paper-

based program and very explicit. I collected my data after finding a good technological medium

to deliver the same instruction to a different student. This student was on the same reading level

as my original student. I employed the technological tool in my instruction and then collected

the results as the second student progressed. In order to decide on which tool to use, I utilized a

framework called DigiLit, and guidelines from one of my research articles. These resources

helped me to evaluate several applications and programs to see which would be appropriate to

use for instruction. After having researched multiple methods, I decided on one and then used it

for my data collection.

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As I prepared for this project and reviewed my literature, I hypothesized that technology

would benefit students on multiple levels. Some of these included substitution of instructional

materials, modification of lessons, and augmentation of instructional material to provide the

students a new way to engage in lesson material. These predictions were informed by the

Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition model (SAMR), a framework that I

learned about in another class which identifies ways technology affects lessons in the classroom

(Hamilton, Rosenberg, & Akcaoglu, 2016).

Review of Literature

My first literature review was based on the DigiLit framework I used to evaluate

technological tools to use in my project. Digital literacy has become a huge necessity for the

current generation. Students are growing up in a technological renaissance where all their

games, shows, and activities are finding their way from toys and paper to tablets and computers.

Teachers now have the responsibility to deliver instruction accordingly, preparing their students

for the digital world that awaits them. With this responsibility comes the need to implement

appropriate technology in the classroom that will be beneficial to helping students learn content

while staying engaged. In 2018, Baxa and Christ published a report on a framework called

DigiLit. This framework evaluates technological resources for quality and appropriateness in the

classroom. It is informed by other research-based frameworks and is synthesized from

information and results of both. In this report, a sample group of 28 preservice teachers were

given the DigiLit framework to utilize in their process of implementing digital technology into

their literacy classrooms. These teachers were then captured on video in their lessons using the

technology they deemed appropriate from use of the framework. Baxa and Christ then created a

narrative of one teacher that combined all the results and feedback of the preservice teachers that
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were given the framework. Each part of the story gave a different example of how the created

teacher, Ms. Taylor, used the framework to inform her instruction and guide her process of

implementing technology into the classroom while using it for her own professional

development. The authors concluded that the DigiLit framework, being based off of other

reliable frameworks, can confidently be used to help teachers, literacy coaches, and school

administrators for selecting digital technology to apply in the classroom and for professional

development. They also conclude that the framework is open for further modification and

advancement.

This article was written in an informational format, with an introduction stating the

importance of digital literacy and the correct implementation of technology resources in the

classroom. The framework was introduced with its primary function, other uses, and its

beneficiaries. The authors use the body of the report to state their samples and explain how they

created a fictional teacher who implements the framework to demonstrate it in action. When I

read the article the first time, it was difficult for me to identify who the fictional teacher was, so I

did not feel that it was very clear. In addition, some information such as the target sample, came

in sporadically and was scattered throughout the article. After reading the report a second time, I

was better able to grasp what the authors were transmitting. This article is relevant to my project

because I aim to use technology in helping the students that I tutor to learn to read. Since this is

an unexplored area for me, the DigiLit framework gives me a concrete, research-based method to

evaluate what technological tools are appropriate to use to help my students. Moreover, it also

directs me to whom I can consult for help in implementing the technology in my lessons.

Regarding future research, I definitely see potential for this framework being applied outside of

the literacy classroom. The sample group of teachers were limited to only this subject, and I
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believe technology can be implemented in all content areas. I suggest that more research be

done in the appropriateness and reliability of the DigiLit framework in other content areas such

as mathematics, science, and social studies. Furthermore, I would suggest that research be

carried out in implementing this framework when selecting technology for students with

disabilities. This framework is a great start and both the authors and I agree that there is

potential for expansion.

My second literature review focused on research aimed to evaluate and justify the

importance of implementing technology in the literacy classroom. When teaching reading,

teachers are integrating technology into their classrooms more and more every year. Preservice

teachers are being taught the importance of implementing technology in their future classrooms

in order to provide a more engaging learning experience for their students. Many education

classes are based solely on this matter, where the preservice teachers learn about different types

of technology. In classes where technology is not the main focus, it still remains part of the

discussion. Many times, it can be difficult for preservice teachers to take this concept from

something abstract and see concrete methods that certified teachers use to implement the

technology. McDermott and Gormley (2015) conducted a study that helps to bridge this

knowledge gap. The purpose of the study was to find out how teachers of elementary grades are

implementing technology into their reading lessons and how it is impacting student reading

success. In addition, the study aimed to give more perspective to the question of whether or not

implementing more technology is beneficial to students when looking at the big picture. The

study was carried out through a case study method. The authors carried out the case study in one

urban school, which was chosen due to the abundance of technological resources offered to their

teachers. The authors collected data through observations, note-taking, impromptu conversations
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with teachers and students, as well as teacher interviews. While the data was collected from

observing both teachers and students, the target sample was four teachers of first, second, and

fourth grade reading. One of the fourth-grade teachers also taught reading in fifth and sixth

grade, so data was collected for technology use in those classrooms as well. At the conclusion of

the study, the authors found that technology was deeply integrated into the classroom, and that it

played a role in the orderliness and the flow of the classroom instruction. Through their

observations and data collections, they found multiple ways teachers use technology in the

classroom, and these methods give students the opportunity to become acclimated to technology

whether it be hands-on or hands-off. Upon conclusion, the authors also shared data that supports

both sides of the argument of whether or not using technology in the classroom is beneficial to

students.

This article provided a lot of helpful insight into how teachers concretely integrate

technology use into their classrooms. It was very helpful that they observed and recorded data

on teachers from multiple grade levels, since different grades have different standards and

therefore technology might need to be implemented in different ways. I felt that first, second,

and fourth grade was a pretty clear spread across the elementary school in general, and even

having fifth and sixth grade observations were helpful as well. The only difficult part of this

article for me was the data table. Although simple, the table was distracting and therefore hard

to read because it was sideways in the article. Also, the conclusion was very open-ended and I

like to have a clear suggestion for tactics to either implement or avoid. The authors discuss

specific ways teachers integrated technology into their lessons, but never address which specific

methods are beneficial or not. Regardless, the authors provide a lot of information that I believe

will be relevant for use in my Action Research Project. I aim to integrate technology into
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teaching student reading, and the way the authors recorded information on how exactly teachers

did this is going to be very helpful for me to bridge the gap between the abstract knowledge and

hands-on experience of implementing it into my reading lessons. As far as future research goes,

I would definitely like to see this study done again across multiple schools, in different parts of

the country in order to identify trends that could lead to more insight into whether technology in

reading lessons is good or bad for students overall. Of course, every student is different and

some might benefit more than others, but to see data pools from different regions, schools, and

demographics would shed more light on situations where technology is or is not appropriate.

My third literature review studied SFA and its effectiveness in reading instruction. When

choosing new programs to implement in the literacy classroom, it is important for schools to

adopt those that are evidence-based and shown to benefit students in early literacy skills such as

phonics and fluency. A program that is extremely popular and has shown to provide this type of

quality instruction is Success for All (SFA). SFA has been around for quite some time, and

along the way the program has evolved, and so have the resources teachers have for their

classrooms. Teacher methodology has also changed. Therefore, further evaluation of the more

recent SFA is needed to ensure that it is still evidence-based. Slavin, Madden, Quint, and the

Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (2014) carried out a study to do this. The

purpose of this experimental study was to evaluate the expansion of the SFA program model,

which now has begun to include technology as well as training for faculty. Also, since schools

have changed their reading instruction methods since the last evaluation of the program occurred,

an evaluation ensures the continued reliability of the SFA program. In this experimental study,

2,956 kindergarteners were sampled across 37 schools. The authors began the study by

administering pretests and finished with posttests for results. These tests assessed their word
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identification knowledge and letter-word skills. All these participants were randomly assigned to

schools implementing SFA or control schools that delivered reading instruction without the use

of SFA. Upon completion of the study, the authors found that SFA had significant positive

effects on the kindergarteners that were tested on one out of the two assessment components

given to them. Word identification was positively affected in the kindergarteners across a range

of socioeconomic backgrounds and demographics. The authors also reported that SFA had

neither a positive nor negative impact on the kindergarteners’ letter-word skills. In sum, the

kindergarteners who were instructed under the SFA model performed much better than those

who did not receive SFA instruction on word identification skills.

I found the way the authors carried out the experiment to be very worthy in terms of

process and sample. All the students sampled were kindergarteners, and I thought it was very

beneficial to the study to have a large sample of students from the same age group and at a

similar developmental level. In addition, I thought the simple manner of collecting data made

the results easy to understand. I believe this most likely helped teachers with fidelity as well. It

did not seem to be a complicated study. The one difficulty I found in the article was

understanding what the i3 grant was. I had to reread it a few times because of parentheses and

acronyms but understood it to be funds to evaluate the effectiveness of the new SFA model. The

rest of the article was easy to comprehend. This is a relevant article to my study because it is the

basis of what I will be using for my data collection. I am currently tutoring reading in a Ohio

Valley public school using the SFA program. This article gives a lot of information about what

SFA is and I will also be using the new, computer based SFA to compare technology versus non-

technological reading instruction and how technology benefits students. So, the fact that this

study confirms the validity of SFA is directly relevant to my paper because I am using it as the
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variable in my data collection. When thinking of future research, I would carry out this study

with a similar sized sample of students from different grade levels in order to test its

effectiveness when students are at a different developmental age. I would also like to see a study

where they test the SFA computer program and how it compares to the original SFA study with

the kindergarteners. Since this is what I will be doing, I am eager to see the results I find.

My final literature review selected a program that is already in use to teach fluency to

students. When examining the literacy classroom, particularly in the instruction of phonemic

awareness, fluency, and reading comprehension, teachers need a multitude of tools at their

disposal. For years now, many students are not reading on grade level in early grades. Any

effective tools and practices that are available should be considered by teachers to address and

attempt to close this achievement gap. A study performed by Germeroth, Kelleman, and Spartz

(2018) examined the effectiveness of one of these tools. Lyrics2Learn (L2L) is a technology-

based program where students have the opportunity to engage in repeated readings of musical

lyrics, where the material is read in a melodic fashion multiple times a week. Students begin to

perform these repeated readings with more motivation and then answer increasingly complex

questions as they progress. The aim of this program is to assist students in learning early literacy

skills in a fun context. The authors’ purpose of the study was to implement L2L throughout a

full year of school and compare student achievement to a control group of students who did not

use L2L. Through this implementation, they aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of this program

and determine whether or not its use was beneficial to students’ early literacy skills, namely

fluency and reading comprehension. The sample used in this experimental study was a group of

463 students in grades Kindergarten through 3rd grade from 9 schools in an urban school district.

The first 8 weeks showed dramatic improvement in student reading achievement and then
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seemed to level off, but student motivation and engagement was still up. At the conclusion of

the study, the authors found that implementation of L2L neither increased nor decreased the level

of student achievement overall. However, they also concluded that there were other benefits to

the use of the program. Some of these benefits included increased teacher self-efficacy in the

use of technology as well as a general perception that technology use is helpful and that the use

of L2L was beneficial for teacher training in its use. This is an important finding in a generation

where technology use is becoming commonplace in the classroom.

There were several things I found worthy in this article. The authors’ data show

concretely that there are effective technological mediums to address literacy skills such as

fluency and comprehension. This is worthy to me since I aim to employ technology to aid

literacy instruction in a meaningful way for my paper. I found the sample used by the authors to

be an appropriate evaluation of the technology because of the number of students and the range

of schools in which it was studied. The data from the sample showed that the L2L program’s

effectiveness was based on more than a few isolated cases, and that the results were a worthy and

accurate representation of its usefulness. I did not find anything in the article to be unnecessary.

Everything in the article was relevant to what was being studied, from the introduction to the

conclusion. I found very few things difficult about the article. Some of the tables of data were

cluttered and confusing to read, although when they were described it made more sense. This

was one of the easier articles for me to understand. The text was not overly dense and the

language used was easy for me to comprehend. I did however, have to go back and reread the

results, because I saw that the final conclusion was that L2L neither increased or decreased

student achievement. I had read earlier in the article that fluency rates had increased 50-100%,

but then I clarified that those increases were just in the first eight weeks of its use. This article is
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directly relevant to what I am studying because it examines the effectiveness of use of

technology in early literacy skills of fluency and comprehension. In my Action Research

Project, I am examining the same thing, but with more emphasis on phonemic awareness and

letter recognition as well. I still find this article to be extremely relevant because all of the skills

are part of the process of learning to read, and technology is the center of that process in this

article. In terms of future research, I would repeat the study using a different program on the

same sample in order to compare student achievement changes within programs. I would also

try to repeat the study in a different demographic, such as suburban or rural and see if there are

any differences in the program’s effectiveness. Overall, I found this to be a very beneficial

insight into my research.

Methodology

To begin my research, I applied the knowledge gained through class and my literature

reviews to evaluate applications and programs that I believed could be appropriate to use in

phonics and literacy instruction. The applications I evaluated were found by searching the

internet independently. These applications, if I chose to use them, would be mostly

supplemental and substitutional in nature. During this evaluation, I found five phonics and

fluency applications, as well as two programs to evaluate with the DigiLit framework. I also

considered guiding points in my other research for appropriately implementing technology in

reading instruction. As I found these resources, I tested and familiarized myself with the ones I

was able to. I then made sure the tools fulfilled the four pillars as outlined in the DigiLit

framework. These four pillars ensure that the application being considered for use has

appropriate literacy content (i.e. relevant and developmentally appropriate material), were of

good quality (i.e. not overstimulating or unstimulating with excessive visuals, well organized,
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and works without glitches), were intuitive (i.e. easy for a student to figure out how to use on

his/her own), and interactive (i.e. the student is not just watching videos but is actively engaged

with the program) (Baxa & Christ, 2017). The After carrying out this research, I selected one

technological tool to use in a case study with two students in the Ohio Valley school I was

working in.

The first application I evaluated is called Wonster Words. This application is a phonics

and spelling application that allows kids to interact with the touch screen of an iPad to drag letter

sounds into their respective places to make a word. Every time a student touches a letter, the

letter sound is produced and as they drag more letters onto the word the word is sounded out.

The animation is engaging and motivating for students as they progress through stages to build

more difficult words. This application fulfilled all four pillars of the DigiLit framework, and I

deemed it as worthy for educational use. However, the word selection seemed to be random and

therefore, I could not justify it as an application I could use and compare it to baseline data I

collected from one of my participants. In my opinion, the inconsistency of instructional material

between the two methods would not have yielded authentic data.

The next application I evaluated, called ABC Kids, is another phonics-based application.

It focuses on the alphabet principle and allows a child to trace a letter to learn that the sound of

the letter corresponds with a written symbol, which is the basis of phonics (Henbest & Apel,

2017). A child can do this exercise with both uppercase and lowercase letters, and then move on

to work with sound association (e. g. “A” is for apple). There is also a teaching mode in the

application which I explored. The teaching mode did not seem to differ from the student mode.

This application was intuitive, interactive, of good quality, and had appropriate material for

instructing in the alphabet principle. However, it was limited to letter recognition and the
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alphabet principle, so I did not consider it appropriate to use for my purposes due to the lack of

instructional material in phonics and fluency.

Monkey Junior was the third application I researched. This application is a phonics and

fluency application where a student can create a profile and then progress through lessons

learning simple three and four-phoneme animal names. The application presents the word, then

a picture of the animal. As the student moves forward, the application shows the word again

with an animation that traces the word at the speed that the phonemes are sounded out. This

animation occurs at a normal speaking rate of the word. This is the extent of the activities that I

saw as I tested out the application. There are multiple stages and lessons, but it takes a very long

time to progress and for my purposes, I did not consider it worthwhile to continue to explore the

application. I do not believe Monkey Junior fulfilled the four pillars of DigiLit, because the

application was not interactive beyond swiping for the next animal, and the quality of the

application was not good. It was full of glitches and changes in display when the videos of the

animals performing actions occurred. It seemed as if they were internet videos integrated into

the application rather than produced by Monkey Junior or originating from the application.

Therefore, I did not consider it worthy to use in the classroom or in my project.

The fourth application I evaluated is called Reading Fluency. In Reading Fluency, the

student is presented a passage and given a time limit to complete the reading. After completing

the passage, the student moves on to the next passage and the process continues. At the start of

Reading Fluency, students can select their difficulty, and for my research purposes I chose

beginner. I found the passages to be quite difficult even for a beginning reader, especially

readers at the reading level of the participants for my study. Having many multisyllabic proper

nouns and insufficient high frequency words, I chose not to use this application for my project.
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However, for higher-level readers, it could be useful. When I applied the DigiLit framework, I

was very stuck on whether the application was intuitive or not. I do not believe it would have

been for students at the age I am working with, but since it could be appropriate for higher-level

readers, perhaps it would be more intuitive for them.

Reading for Speed and Fluency (RSF) was the final application I researched for my

project. This application lets students choose an egg as their character that grows as they

progress through the application and eventually hatches when the student reaches completion of

the program. As I explored RSF, I found the material to be of very poor quality. It was more of

a vocabulary application, and required recognition of multisyllabic, low-frequency words at the

beginning level of the program. The content was very scattered and difficult follow, and it was

not intuitive. I quickly determined RSF to be inappropriate for my use as well as for use in the

classroom as per the DigiLit framework.

After evaluating these four applications, I moved on to apply Lyrics2Learn (L2L), a

technology-infused fluency application to the DigiLit framework. I found this program as I was

researching technological tools for my project and considered the possibility of modifying it for

use with my participants. L2L is research based for fluency, which ensures it is appropriate for

the classroom. Evidence-based approaches are of great importance, especially in fluency

instruction because reader fluency is necessary for further reading comprehension (Germeroth,

Kelleman, & Spartz, 2018). The application gives students passages to read along to music. The

passages light up as students are to read and are selected according to the grade level chosen by

the teacher. The text is repetitive and the application is engaging. Teachers can keep track of

multiple users and their scores as well. This application also fulfilled the four pillars of the

DigiLit framework.
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As I did my research, a program called Lightning Squad was presented to me by the

teacher who was in charge of the tutoring sessions I was completing at the school. She told me it

was the exact SFA program I was working with, and had been adapted into a computer version.

I did not find anything else to be as appropriate as the technological version of the program I was

already doing, since many of the skills we work on together are phonics based. For these

reasons, I decided to use Lightning Squad as my tool for the project.

Upon commencement of the case study, I selected my participants. I worked with one

first-grade student who I had already been tutoring with the non-technological SFA program and

for data and anonymity purposes have labeled him “Student 1.” My other participant was a

kindergartener who was on the same reading level, according to my supervisor. This participant

will be “Student 2.” I chose these two students because I believed that participants who were at

the same reading level would yield the most authentic results. Again, I chose Lightning Squad as

my technological tool because I believed it to be the tool that would yield authentic data to

compare to my baseline data. When I began tutoring my first-grade participant, I administered a

preassessment to find out his current reading level and select a proper tutoring plan for him. I

followed up the preassessment with four, 20 minute tutoring sessions that were scripted from the

SFA tutoring manual. The reassessment was administered at the conclusion of these four

lessons. These results were used as my baseline data. My second participant was a

kindergartener reading at the same level as my first participant. I administered the same

preassessment to him and then used the computer program for the instruction leading up to the

reassessment. The four tutoring sessions were also 20 minutes long. After the reassessment, I

compared the results to my baseline data to see how my research question had been answered.
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The SFA assessment I utilized for my case study is divided into 3 parts, each with a series

of reading objectives. The first objective is phonemic awareness (PA), which contains three

probes. In these three probes, the student is tested on first sound awareness, blending, and

segmenting. To master each probe, the student must answer all questions with 80% accuracy.

The next objective is Concepts About Print (CAP) followed by Letter Skills (LS), also

containing three probes. The three LS probes are identifying letter sounds, writing a letter for a

specific sound, and identifying letter names. In these probes, phonics is explicitly evaluated.

Each objective in letter skills contains sets or rows of letters and student must master specific

sets at 100% accuracy to progress through the preassessment. After letter skills, the assessment

comes to a stop where the administrator will determine whether to continue or stop the

assessment. To continue the assessment, the student must master the first objective in PA, and

the first set of the first objective of LS. If the student does not master these, the assessment stops

and the student is placed in tutoring plan 1. If the student masters these items, the assessment

continues to a new objective, Word Skills (WS). In this section of the assessment there are two

WS probes. The first is a probe of ten sets of five words each that the student must read aloud.

To master each set, the student must read at least four of the five words, or have 80% accuracy.

The second WS probe is spelling, which has nine sets of three words each, and to master each set

the student must spell the words with 100% accuracy. After these two probes, the determination

is made whether to continue or stop the assessment. If the student masters the first two sets of

the first probe, the assessment continues. Otherwise, the student is placed in tutoring plan 2.

Findings

When I administered the preassessment to my baseline student, he did not master any of

the probes administered. In PA, he answered with 60% accuracy on the first sound probe, 30%
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accuracy on the blending probe, and 40% on the segmenting probe. In LS, he mastered none of

the sets, but answered the first set with 90% accuracy, the second set with 81%, and the third and

fourth sets with 50% accuracy. In the second LS probe, the student did not master any of the

three sets for writing a letter for a specific sound. On the first and second sets he answered with

70% accuracy. On the third set he answered with 60% accuracy. For the third LS probe,

identifying letter names, the student answered with 90% accuracy on the first two sets. He

answered with 71% on the third set. Upon conclusion of the preassessment, the results indicated

he should be placed on tutoring plan 1. After four tutoring sessions with the SFA tutoring

manual, I administered the reassessment. Upon completion of the reassessment, the student

mastered the first two probes of PA. The first sound probe was mastered with 100% accuracy

and the blending probe was mastered with 80%. The student did not master the segmenting

probe, but improved to 70%. In LS, the first three sets were mastered by the student at 100%.

Writing a letter for a specific sound improved to 80% on the first set and 81% for the second set.

The third set he mastered with 100% accuracy. He mastered the third probe, letter name

recognition, at 100%. Thus, he moved onto the second part of the preassessment, WS. He did

not master the first set, however, completing it with 60% accuracy. These results indicated that

the student was ready to move on to tutoring plan 2, and that the SFA tutoring method, when

used as directed, was beneficial to student learning.

After completing my data collection for Student 1, I began to collect data for Student 2. I

administered the same preassessment to the student I would be tutoring with the Lightning Squad

program. The results from Student 2 were similar. The student mastered the first PA probe with

80% accuracy, but completed the blending probe with 0% accuracy and the segmenting probe

with 10% accuracy. He did not master any of the sets in the LS probes. He completed the first
THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 19

set in identifying letter sounds with 80% accuracy, the second set with 81% accuracy and the

third set with 50% accuracy. In writing letters for specific sounds, the student scored 20% on the

first set, 36% on the second set, and 0% on the last set. The third probe, identifying letter names

was then administered. The student completed all three sets with 100% accuracy. At the

conclusion of the preassessment he was also placed on tutoring plan 1. I then commenced with

the tutoring sessions using the Lightning Squad computer program and administered the

reassessment after four visits. The reassessment data indicated improvement in the first PA

probe, answering with 90% accuracy. He did not master the blending probe, but improved to

40%. In the segmenting probe, he improved to 50%. In the letter sound probe of the LS section,

he mastered the first set with 100% accuracy. He remained at 81% accuracy for the second set,

and 50% accuracy for the third. The results of the second probe, writing letters for specific

sounds, also indicated some improvement. The student answered with 50% accuracy on the first

set, but remained the same for the other two sets. When identifying letter names, the student

answered all but one item correctly, the letter “g,” completing the probe with 96% accuracy.

Mastery of the first probe in PA and the first set of the first probe in LS meant he was ready to

move onto the WS section of the assessment. He did not, however master the first set in WS,

scoring a 60% accuracy on reading words. The results of this reassessment indicated he was

ready to move up to tutoring plan 2. Because of these results, I concluded that Lightning Squad

was an effective tool for student learning.

My research question aimed to answer how technology can be used to benefit fluency and

phonics skills in students. The following tables represent the data obtained from the assessments

and track improvements in scoring.

THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 20

Preassessment Data for Students 1 and 2

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
First Sound Blending Segmenting Letter Sound Writing Letters Letter Name Word
Recognition Recognition for Specific Recognition Recognition
(1st Set) Sounds (1st (1st Set) (n/a)
Set)

Student 1 Student 2

Reassessment Data
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
First Sound Blending Segmenting Letter Sound Writing Letters Letter Name Word
Recognition Recognition for Specific Recognition Recognition
(1st Set) Sounds (1st (1st Set)
Set)

Student 1 Student 2
THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 21

Post-Intervention Improvement Percentages

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
First Sound Blending Segmenting Letter Sound Writing Letters Letter Name Word
-10 Recognition Recognition for Specific Recognition Recognition
Sounds

Student 1 Student 2

The last table represents the overall percentage of each student’s improvement after being

tutored using either the traditional SFA manual or the Lightning Squad Computer Program. The

data indicate that of six different probes, each student improved their overall accuracy. One

student’s percentage dropped in letter recognition by missing one letter, but I believe that to be

an anomaly. Overall, Student 1 had a higher improvement percentage than Student 2 in three of

six probes administered, which infers that the Lightning program did not give Student 2 a

significant advantage in instruction. However, Student 2 showed significant improvement in the

phonics-based probes of the assessment which indicates that Lightning Squad is still a viable tool

to benefit student learning. This data, and the other research I carried out offers insight to my

research question. According to my findings, technology can be used in the form of explicit

instruction through tutoring programs such as Lightning Squad to benefit phonics and fluency

acquisition in students. Additionally, evidence-based and appropriate applications can be used in

the classroom as supplemental support to reading instruction. After carrying out this research, I

also see sufficient opportunity to evaluate fluency more directly.

THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 22

Recommendations

Based on the data I collected, the answer to my research question is inconclusive. The

data indicated that technology improved student learning in phonics. However, my results did

not indicate an advantage of technology over the traditional analog method. The outcome

showed that it was equally as effective as the way I tutored Student 1. The advantages I was

informed on came mostly through my literature reviews. This leads me to conclude that my

research results were at least meaningful and the research should be continued. I see several

avenues for future research in this subject area.

There were several limitations for this study. The first limitation was the students I was

able to use for my study. I would have liked to use two first-grade students, but I had to use a

kindergartener. This happened because all first-graders in the school that needed reading

interventions were already being helped, so my results would have been skewed. The

kindergarten student was the only one available that was, according to the supervisor, on the

same reading level as Student 1. In addition to the limitation of not having two students in the

same grade, the were also at a different developmental level. Although the developmental

difference was perhaps small, I would have liked the students to be at the same level to yield the

most authentic results. The Lightning Squad program was the technological version of SFA the

school was using, and the material in the lessons (e.g. words) was the same, but the structure of

learning was different. Student 1 had a tutoring method that was very explicit and allowed

practice to a greater detail in all areas of reading being targeted. Lightning Squad was a more

combined approach, grouping items together to practice. I did not feel like I could select

individual letters or words to work on, and believe that affected my ability to target specific

items with which Student 2 struggled. I would recommend, according to these results and
THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 23

limitations, that a longer period of intervention be carried out in order to see if the results

eventually began to yield more conclusive evidence. In addition to this, I would recommend the

study be repeated with another student at the same reading and developmental level.

These data reveal multiple paths for future research. To start, a larger group of students

can be evaluated for baseline data as well as to obtain data from technological intervention.

These groups should be the same age and reading level. To continue, the study can be carried

out with other groups at different age and reading levels and results compared. These results

could show a possible age or developmental level where technology is more appropriate or

effective in helping instruction in phonics and fluency. Another approach would be to select a

technological device that works more on fluency than phonics and repeat the study with that

intervention. This would provide more meaningful data in terms of fluency, and results could be

compared between phonics and fluency individually to see if technology benefits one area of

literacy more than the other. Following this, research could be done to determine how

technology can benefit the other areas of literacy such as phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and

comprehension. The final direction I would advise for future research is comparison between

technological resources. In this paper, I have discussed multiple applications and programs that

aid reading instruction through technological means. I selected one to use for my study, but

there are several others in this paper that are worthy of examining further. There are myriad of

tools that were not covered in this report that could also be researched. Carrying out a similar

study and comparing the results between programs would be a meaningful way to not only

identify how technology can benefit reading and phonics instruction, but which tools are more

effective than others. The aforementioned directions for future research can prove to be a
THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 24

productive means for finding the highest quality of technology-infused instruction for students in

the literacy classroom.

THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 25

References

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Germeroth, C., Kelleman, B., & Spartz, J. (2018). Lyrics2learn: Teaching fluency through music

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modification redefinition (samr) model: A critical review and suggestions for its use.

TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 60(5), 433-441.

Henbest, V. S., & Apel, K. (2017). Effective word reading instruction: What does the evidence

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Veenendaal, N. J., Groen, M. A., & Verhoven, L. (2015). What oral text reading fluency can

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Appendix
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THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON PHONICS AND FLUENCY 28