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Smalti and Early Years Literacy

how Smalti offers a new, compelling approach to literacy learning

Smalti and Early Years Literacy

Learning to read in your mother tongue is possibly the most significant step in a person’s education. It can also present a challenge to young learners. Smalti offers an effective and scientifically valid way to learn to read in a way that is fun and playful. In this document we explain how Smalti draws on the expert advice to deliver a compelling new resource that teaches reading in early years.

What is Smalti?Smalti combines interactive learning and entertainment with physical play in the form of intelligent toys. Specifically, it is a system including:

• A 6 x 6cm networked computer in the form of a small tile with the top surface filled by a screen. Each tile reacts on touch with other Smalti tiles.

• Software which exploits the unique Smalti interactions, drawing on software in early learning and play devices (especially learning to read), sociable games (i.e. games you play together like card games) and a wide range of other applications. An open source Software Development Kit (SDK) supports the development of further applications.

• An application store where users have on-demand access to new software. This has the added advantage of developing long term relationships with customers/learners and gaining intelligence about their needs

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A  smart  alphabet  blockThe simplest form of Smalti is a smart alphabet block. Touch it and it will sound the letter and provide some animated reinforcement (“a for apple” accompanying a short animation).• Bring a “t” tile up to it. It will

now sound “at” and include “at” in a simple sentence with a short animation (“I am at home”).

• Bring a “c” tile and make the word “cat”.......... you can guess what might happen.

• Bring up a blank tile and place it beneath the three tiles spelling “c” “a” and “t”. This new tile now carries the word “cat”. When you touch it, it says the word “cat” together with a short animation.

• Break up the three tiles c” “a” and “t” and choose a “p” tile and make the word “tap”. It gives you an animation of tap ~ as in faucet. Touch it again and it animates the word “tap”~ as in a gentle and repeated knocking. The sound “tap” is repeated both times. Bring up an “e” tile and the word “tape” is made....etc.

In another game, the learner combines “c” and “h” to make a “ch” tile. They can play with that tile to make words such as “chap”, “chat” and “catch”. Beyond letter tiles, the tiles become word tiles and combine to make meaningful phrases and sentences.

But Smalti is much more than just a smart alphabet block. As a programmable device, it can deliver a range of interactive activities, including letter and word games for learners to play alone or with other children or adults.

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Ways to teach readingThe US Government’s National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) suggests a range of research based approaches that support early literacy teaching and learning including:

(a) Playing games like alphabet bingo to teach the names of the letter-shapes.

(b) Using rhymes, songs and poems to help make children aware of sounds in language and provide opportunities to practice manipulating sounds.

(c) Helping children remember spoken information by giving simple, multi-step directions for activities.

(d) Reading books that expose children to varied and rich vocabulary to encourage oral language development.

(e) Conducting activities with books or other forms of print to help children understand how print works.

Smalti is designed to provide all these experiences in highly interactive ways. Smalti offers:

• Games such as alphabet bingo that teach letter names, shapes and sounds.

• Games that challenge the learner to name letters as quickly as they can.

• Games that provide a mix of upper- and lower-case letters and ask the child to identify the capital letters.

• Songs and rhymes that include the sounds associated with letters• Games that encourage learners to manipulate sounds that

make up words (such as syllables, onset-rime and phonemes) and to break apart words

• Activities that combine sounds to make words (‘tooth’ plus ‘brush’ makes toothbrush)

• Games that help children remember spoken information• Stories that expose children to varied and rich vocabulary • Activities that ask the leaner to explain what is happening in the

story and in the pictures.• Games that develop a “deep” understanding by placing new

vocabulary in context, providing different meanings for the same word, using the same word in different kinds of sentences.

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• Activities that show learners how to ask questions (such as what, when, where, why, how, and who).

• Games that help children develop language for making comparisons (These feel soft, but these feel hard).

• Activities that use vocabulary as a foundation for more complex skills such as grammatical knowledge, definitional vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

In addition to the NIFL advice, the UK government’s advice to parents on the preparation of early learners to be good readers includes:-

· have fun with sounds· listen carefully· develop their vocabulary· listen and remember sounds· talk about sounds· understand that spoken words are made up of different sounds

Smalti engages young learners in these activities through seven interlinking approaches that help to develop reading skills:

1. Environmental sounds - identifying sounds in everyday life and using them as the basis for play

2. Instrumental sounds - distinguishing between and playing with music

3. Body percussion – Smalti’s percussion games help learners understand different rhythms in everyday life

4. Rhythm and rhyme - as an audio and visual device, Smalti emphasises rhyme and rhythm in many engaging ways

5. Alliteration

6. Voice sounds - Smalti allows you to record your own voice and put your own pictures on tiles

7. Oral blending and segmenting

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Some examples of Smalti activities

Story gamesA good language teacher would want to put work on letters into a meaningful context. Within the Smalti reading scheme, each unit would come with a story. The story sets the context for the language, words and phonemes used in subsequent play- and making the story will be play in itself.

Each tile represents a part of a story - the equivalent of “spread” or a page in text. As the learner brings tile up to tile, the story develops. At each stage, the tile animates the story. The child can repeat any part of the story in any order by touching a tile. There is lots of potential for the imaginative author to include surprises and diversions to keep the learner interested - and for the learner, should they chose to do so, to make nonsense of the story.

Games with words and lettersHaving set the context with stories, the characters and scenes in the stories become the basis and artwork for further games. The games broadly fall into matching and sequencing categories. The simple forms are multimedia pelmanism, the memory matching game - all of the tiles are blank and two cards are touched in turn to reveal their “contents”. Unlike the playing card version, the learner can mix in sounds and animations with the illustration or letter. These can be extended by creating rhyming matches or using onset (beginning phonemes of words) matching to make interesting combinations that give audio-visual rewards for successful matches. The learnere can create word games where the introduction of an adjective or adverb modifies a sequence.

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More and more gamesThe programmable nature of Smalti means that there are limitless possibilities for new games. Anything that involves sequencing, constructing, deconstructing and matching are right for Smalti. This encompasses nearly every card and board game ever invented and also the potential for shared collaborative and competitive activities. And better yet - Smalti is multimedia and interactive.

The other key element to Smalti is that it is also about real things:, real movement, authentic contexts and physically embodied learning.

“ E v e n b e f o re c h ild re n s t a r t s c h o o l, t h e y c a n b e c o m e a w a re o f s y s t e m a t ic p a t t e rn s o f s o u n d s in s p o k e n la n g u a g e , m a n ip u la t e s o u n d s in w o rd s , r e c o g n iz e w o rd s a n d b re a k t h e m a p a rt in t o s m a lle r u n it s , le a rn t h e r e la t io n s h ip b e t w e e n s o u n d s a n d le t t e rs , a n d b u ild t h e ir o ra l la n g u a g e a n d v o c a b u la ry s k ills . ” E A RL Y B E GINNINGS : E a rly L it e ra c y

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The Smalti softwareSmalti software sits in what has been termed the cloud - it is not stored on the learner’s Smalti tiles but downloaded and used by learners as and when they need it. We can carefully sequence the way that the learner receives software. We can suggest what should come next in a learning sequence. We can move the child on or give them reinforcement at the level that they are at. We can provide stories with their favourite characters.

We aim to make it easy for third parties to develop resources for Smalti which will lead to a diversity and richness of material available. These resources would be delivered through the same “cloud” so that the system would be consistent to users. This borrows from Apple’s philosophy.

As the system develops, we will provide mechanisms for active choice feedback from the child and for artificial intelligence to analyse choices, responses and action of the learner so that we can better tailor the system to their needs and provide reporting to parents and teachers about the learner. This develops a long term relationship with our users.

Further reading and sources

UK DCSF: Letters and Sounds: A guide for parents and carers of children in Early Years settings.

Downloadable from http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/node/83308?uc=force_uj

USA NILF: Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel

Downloadable from: http://www.nifl.gov/publications/pdf/NELPReport09.pdf

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