Reading Adventure Time app for iPhone and iPad

The Reading Adventure Time App is a powerful literacy assessment and instructional tool that supports braille reading of students who are visually impaired. This is a project of California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA).

The main goal of Reading Adventure Time is to create and disseminate a mobile app that incorporates evidence-based instructional strategies to support the development of literacy skills of students who read braille. A secondary goal is to increase technology skills of students and teachers who use the app.  Specifically, to access the app, teachers and students must learn to use iPads with Voice Over (VO – a screen reading accessibility option built into the operating system for individuals with visual impairments) and refreshable braille displays (a portable periphery device that pairs with the iPad and provides braille output of the screen).

The Reading Adventure Time app is designed to support braille literacy development in the area of Reading for all grade levels 1st-12th grades. The app supports both Unified English Braille (UEB). The assessment portion of the app has a placement test (designed to identify the student’s performance level) and progress monitoring (designed to provide ongoing student performance data and includes 8 sets of content). The assessment contains a fluency measure, which requires that the student read the passage aloud while the app records the student’s voice. When the student begins reading, a timer starts and records how long it takes the student to read the passage. When the student is finished, he responds to several comprehension questions. The reading comprehension questions are aligned with the Reading Literature and Reading Information Text of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Progress monitoring assessments also have measures for three of the Language standards of the CCSS. After the comprehension questions are answered, the teacher is given the iPad and allowed to score the passage by marking the words read incorrectly (miscues), and types of miscues (e.g. substitution of a word, omission of a word, change in the meaning of the sentence, or braille error). Once the passage is scored by the teacher, an overall score report is generated that indicates the student’s reading speed in correct words per minute (CWPM), accuracy, comprehension score with a detailed list of CCSS met, and a list of miscues and types of miscues.

The activities section of the app has activities that are designed to focus on subskills such as reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension, and braille symbol recognition. To accommodate for differences within grade levels, the app is structured to include five age groupings and several levels as follows.
(list of reading ages / levels)

Apprentice – Grades 1 & 2*
• Level 1 – early 1st grade
• Level 2 – late 1st grade
• Level 3 – early 2nd grade
• Level 4 – late 2nd grade

Freshman – Grades 3 & 4*
• Level 1 – early 3rd grade
• Level 2 – late 3rd grade
• Level 3 – early 4th grade
• Level 4 – late 4th grade

Sophomore – Grades 5 & 6*
• Level 1 – early 5th grade
• Level 2 – late 5th grade
• Level 3 – early 6th grade
• Level 4 – late 6th grade

Junior Varsity – Grades 7, 8, & 9*
• Level 1 – 7th grade
• Level 2 – 8th grade
• Level 3 – 9th grade

Varsity – Grades 10, 11 & 12*
• Level 1 – 10th grade
• Level 2 – 11th grade
• Level 3 – 12th grade

* Note: Levels are approximate.