Mixing video clips in with beginning-reading lessons helps improve 1st graders’ reading skills—at least a little, concludes a study published in the February issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Educational Psychology.
“Achievement Effects of Embedded Multimedia” is in the February 2006 issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology.
Researchers studied 10 elementary schools in Hartford, Conn., that were using the Success for All program to teach reading to 1st graders. Half the schools were chosen at random to embed brief video clips into the students’ daily Success For All lessons. The other half used the same program for the same amount of time, but without the video component.
At the end of five months, the researchers found, the children in the experimental group were better than their control-group counterparts on some, but not all, measures of early reading skills. The skills that improved the most tended to be those emphasized in the video segments.
