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Program Description2
Earobics® is interactive software that provides students in pre-K through third grade with individual, systematic instruction in early literacy skills as students interact with animated characters. Earobics® Foundations is the version for prekindergaten, kindergarten, and first grade. Earobics® Connections is for second and third graders and older struggling readers. The program builds children’s skills in phonemic awareness, auditory processing, and phonics, as well as the cognitive and language skills required for comprehension. Each level of instruction addresses recognizing and blending sounds, rhyming, and discriminating phonemes within words, adjusting to each student’s ability level. The software is supported by music, audiocassettes, and videotapes and includes picture/word cards, letter-sound decks, big books, little books, and leveled readers for reading independently or in groups.
Two studies of Earobics® meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards and two studies meet WWC evidence standards with reservations. The four studies included 246 students from grades K through 3 in Los Angeles, California; southwest Florida; Anchorage, Alaska; and Chicago, Illinois.3
Based on these four studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Earobics® to be small for alphabetics and reading fluency. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of Earobics® in the comprehension or general reading achievement domains.
Earobics® was found to have positive effects on alphabetics and potentially positive effects on reading fluency.
| Alphabetics | Reading fluency | Comprehension | General reading achievement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | Positive effects | Potentially positive effects | na | na |
| Improvement index4 | Average: +25 percentile points Range: 0 to +49 percentile points |
Average: +15 percentile points Range: +3 to +33 percentile points |
na na |
na na |
| na = not applicable | ||||
1 This report has been updated to include reviews of 10 studies released in 2005 and later. A complete list and disposition of all studies reviewed is provided
in the references.
2 The descriptive information for this program was obtained in 2007 from a publicly available source: the program’s website (http://www.earobics.com). The
WWC requests developers to review the program description sections for accuracy from their perspective. Neither the authors nor the website provided any
additional information for this update. Further verification of the accuracy of the descriptive information for this program is beyond the scope of this review.
3 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
4 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the studies.
|Institute of Education Sciences
