Blended learning is on the rise. The ability of students to learn from face-to-face instruction and digital media is a concept that launched in the late 1990s (Pappas, 2019). Fast forward roughly twenty years, and blended learning is found in many forms and with all ages of students ranging from pre-k to university.

A lot of teachers today are feeling compelled to integrate the use of technology into instruction. One-to-one (1:1) technology is generally defined as one computing device per student, and districts are moving to one-to-one technology for a variety of reasons. These reasons range from developing students who can compete in a knowledge economy because they have the technological skills to actively participate, in keeping up with the expectations of their stakeholders. Families and community members want to see that their school districts are keeping up with best practices in education, including 1:1 technology. I knew for many years that I wanted to teach in a classroom with 1:1 technology because it would allow me to individualize instruction.

It is important that teachers are able to utilize such resources effectively so that students can achieve the highest possible outcomes. InCare K12 quotes Microsoft as saying, “The ideal is 1:1 computing, an environment in which students use computing devices, such as wireless laptops or tablet PC computers in order to learn anytime and anywhere. Yet, the focus is not on technology. It is about the paradigm shift in how instruction is delivered and the spark that is created in students provides a new sense of enthusiasm and ownership in their learning” (2019).

In 2014 I wrote a grant on behalf of my team with the purpose of acquiring 30 Chromebooks for our team to share. At the time, we had access to two iPads and one iPad mini per class. Our goal was to achieve 1:1 learning, but because of limited funding, 30 was the best we could do. Imagine our surprise when three Chromebook carts appeared at the start of the school year. However, we were quickly disappointed to hear that one cart was for our team, and the other two were headed to third and fifth grades, neither of which had written a grant. Because we had a plan outlined in our grant, we were allowed to house and use all three carts, as long as we promised to share.

Our rudimentary plan for use included students typing all papers, completing research, and utilizing Khan Academy as a daily intervention for math. Around this time we discovered Freckle, then called Front Row, and began to utilize the free (limited) version of their learning management system (LMS). Fast forward five school years to the 2019-2020 and our district is in its second year of 1:1 computing, and my team is in its fifth year of 1:1 access and usage, a practice we continue to hone on a yearly, sometimes daily, basis. The permission granted to use to explore and innovate is one that we have implemented freely. Furthermore, we were directed to “just ask” in reference to acquiring district-level support and financing for innovative programs and ideas that we would like to implement. Because we had collected positive initial research with our use of Freckle in the classroom, the district granted our building’s request to buy the full version and implement it for a one year trial.

Teachers in our district are all at different levels of comfort and use of 1:1 technology. The school district had designed the majority of its professional development around developing the comfort and use of technology in the classroom. A leader in the field of blended learning, Weston Kieschnick, was invited to be the keynote speaker at our first institute day of the 2018 school year. According to Terry Heick (2019), blended learning is defined as the merging of physical and digital learning spaces to complement one another to personalize the learning of all students based on authentic human circumstance and prevailing local technology.

In his TedTalk (2019), Weston Kieschnick, author Bold School, expresses the importance of embracing a "Culture of And" where teachers honor the pedagogy that has worked in the past and blend it with the now and future. Blended learning can be beneficial to students because of many factors. Primarily, the use of technology can in the classroom can increase motivation. Meaningful activities in technology-rich classrooms are motivational to learners (Jonassen, 2000; Roblyer & Edwards, 2000) (as cited in Yang & Wu, 2012). Farquhar (2019) stated that “Students today are digital natives quite comfortable navigating the digital world around them. Digital natives are indigenous to a technology-saturated world, unlike those who grew alongside the development of technology.” Meeting students at the crossroads of technology and education is motivating because it recognizes and honors who they are as people and learners in a digital society.

Differentiated learning also recognizes and honors students for where they are in the learning process. Differentiated learning has a multitude of definitions according to Maldanado, Robinson, and Whaley (2014) which can be synthesized as meeting the individual needs of learners during instruction. Blended learning can be adaptive in nature, which can help students meet differentiated learning and outcomes identified by the teacher. Freckle’s adaptive component was one that my team and I found particularly inviting. One study showed that teacher instruction blended with a minimum of 40 days using the English Language Arts component of the LMS Freckle could lead to an additional 11.3% growth over students who did not meet the minimum number of days (Freckle, 2019).

The importance of blended learning in reading instruction relates back to the significance of reading instruction, especially in elementary school. It is especially important for children to develop their reading skills because while doing so they are developing their vocabularies, imaginations, and future academic success including critical thinking and reasoning. Freckle allows me to blend whole group standard’s based instruction with differentiated instruction. The differentiated component allows for both remediation and enrichment. Remediation and enrichment organized by individual reading standards allows me to facilitate individualized instruction which will help students to be more successful.

In Illinois, students taking the Partners for Assessment of Readiness in College and Careers (PARCC) test, now called the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR), have not been successful in meeting and exceeding the standards in reading. Since its inception in 2015 ("ILLINOIS | PARCC", 2019), 38% or fewer of Illinois students have met or exceeded the standards in Reading. It is of critical importance that we raise the bar in reading, not just to raise test scores, but to develop students into competent citizens.

This case study will explore the effects of blended learning with Freckle on reading development in my fourth-grade classroom. It will make a case for teachers, schools, and districts to implement research-based technology-based programs in conjunction with their face-to-face instructional programs, particularly during reader’s workshop. The particular types of blended learning utilized include supplemental and mastery-based blended learning. Supplemental blended learning is described as a learning structure where students complete most of their learning online or face-to-face, and they supplement the learning with the other. In this case, students received the majority of standards-based instruction face-to-face and supplemented their learning with practice on Freckle. Mastery-based blended learning was also implemented because the student was motivated to demonstrate mastery of comprehension, skills, and vocabulary online.

("12 Different Types of Blended Learning", 2019)

What is blended learning?

TeachThoughtStaff (2019) identifies twelve structures of blended learning. They are listed below.

• Station Rotation Blended Learning- Teachers set up multiple stations, one of which is an online or technology-based learning station, has a fixed schedule.
• Lab Rotation Blended Learning- Takes place in a computer lab and allows for multiple technology-based stations, has a fixed schedule.
• Remote Blended Learning or Enriched Virtual Learning- Work is completed online, and there is intermittent follow up with a teacher.
• Flex Blended Learning- online learning is the primary format with occasional offline activities. A teacher is on-site providing support and instruction as well.
• Flipped Classroom’ Blended Learning- Learning takes place online, much like homework, and the practice takes place in the classroom.
• Individual Rotation Blended Learning-Students move at their own pace through a series of activities.
• Project-Based Blended Learning- Students use resources online or what they have learned in an online class to complete an in-class, possibly group-based, project.
• Self-Directed Blended Learning- Students work toward prescribed learning outcomes in their own ways. The teacher’s role varies as the student progresses toward his or her goal.
• Inside-Out Blended Learning- Student learning in the classroom prepares them for experiences outside of the classroom.
• Outside-In Blended Learning- Students learn primarily outside of the classroom, and then they collaborate and give and receive feedback from within the classroom daily.
• Supplemental Blended Learning- In this structure students complete most of their learning online or face-to-face, and then they supplement learning with the other.
• Mastery-Based Blended Learning- The student is motivated to demonstrate mastery and may use both online and face-to-face interactions to do so.

How is serious gaming a part of blended learning with Freckle?

Farquhar (2019) asserted that serious gaming, defined as gaming with a serious purpose (Gentry et al, 2011) should consider ways to institute various modalities in their design. In this study, students used the LMS Freckle, which has a serious gaming format. Students set goals at the beginning of each week. These goals range from answering a certain number of questions, growing levels, or achieving high levels of accuracy. Upon meeting their goal, students are awarded virtual coins that can be used within the program to dress or provide a home for their avatar. They can earn additional coins for completing additional activities with accuracy. Furthermore, Farquhar (2019) states that “meaningful activities in technology-rich classrooms are motivational to learners” (Jonassen, 2000; Roblyer & Edwards, 2000 as cited in Yang & Wu, 2012). Students find both the gamified components and the activities tthat demonstrate mastery motivating. Another serious gaming component found in Freckle is the ability to try again and again to complete a task. This “freedom to fail” identified by Dicheva, et al. (2015) is quite motivating to students.

However, before this study can attest to the effectiveness of a blended learning environment with the use of Freckle, it is important to identify the non-digital component of the study- reader’s workshop.

What do some successful models of reader’s workshop look like?

The Daily 5 and Cafe

Sisters Gail Boushey and Joan Moser are early gurus in the field of Reader’s Workshop. Boushey and Mouser (2019) have outlined a literacy framework called, “The Daily 5” which calls for students to read to self, work on writing, read to someone, word study, and listen to reading. Furthermore, Boushey and Moser (2019) identify specific strategies of successful readers using the acronym CAFE- comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expansion of vocabulary. The combination of The Daily 5 framework and the instructional strategies categorized by CAFE continues to be proven to be successful (Duty, 2016; LaShomb, 2011; Yackel, 2009).

The Six Ts

The website Reading Rockets recently published Richard Allington’s article ( 2019) “The Six Ts of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction”. In his article, he identifies time, texts, teaching, talking, tasks, and testing as the critical components for exemplary reading instruction. He identified these factors after observing teachers in first and fourth grades that were regarded as being successful reading and writing teachers. In regards to time, Allington (2019) points out that students need as substantial time to read and write throughout the day, suggesting the most excellent of teachers he observed dedicated up to 50% of their day reading and writing. He asserts that texts must be available for all levels of readers and that students should have choice in what they read (Allington, 2019). Teachers need to explicitly teach students skills on which they will be assessed, rather than expecting students to read a passage and answer questions, even if the text is at the student’s individual level (Allington, 2019). Sometimes talking about reading in the classroom is teacher-directed and at other times it is peer-to-peer, but Allington (2019) suggests that open-ended questions all learners to develop critical thinking about reading. Allington noted (2019) that successful students were given choice in tasks, and that tasks were long term in nature. Students were assessed on effort and improvement, rather than achievement (Allington, 2019).

The blended learning approach in this study incorporated the use of Freckle’s English Language Arts (ELA) components in the classroom’s reading instruction program. The classroom’s reading instruction program based on the Common Core Standards was designed by my grade-level team and I at the school with the expertise and guidance of the building’s instructional coach. Reading instruction consists of fluency, vocabulary, language acquisition, comprehension, and response to reading through writing, and other skills including communication and collaboration. Our teacher team began implementing pieces of Freckle during the 2017-2018 school, primarily using the available articles and integrated ELA and social science units. However, the school district invested in the “full” version of the ELA component for the 2019-2020 school year.

The full version allows the teacher to assign more activities, additional comprehensive assessments, and for cloud-based tracking of student progress. Cloud-based refers to the material being accessible via the Internet from any location or device. Available activities include adaptive word study, adaptive skill study, and adaptive comprehension and writing activities (Freckle, 2019). Freckle’s content (2019) is aligned with Common Core Standards. Students take a pretest in each area and are assigned a reading level, skill level, and word study level. As students interact with the program it levels them up or down based on their accuracy. While levels are not arbitrary, they do not coincide with the student’s grade level ability. Freckle (2019) recommends that students complete one assigned and one free choice article weekly in addition to one skill lesson daily and three-word study sessions a week.

Teachers have access to online reports that immediately identify the success rates of students. Teachers use the reports to pinpoint the results of time spent, number of questions, and accuracy for one assignment at a time or for a combination of activities. This allows the teacher to create reteach groups by skill. Often these reteach groups involve the teacher working with students through a skill on their own devices or pulling a group together and reviewing skills together. Freckle does not provide remediation lessons or materials, that is at the teacher’s discretion.

In this study, I examined the efficacy of a blended learning approach, with the use of Freckle, for children in a fourth grade class over the span of six weeks.

Method

Participants

This study was conducted in a suburban fourth-grade classroom approximately 30 minutes west of Chicago. Information was gathered from the work submitted by 20 students in one class. One student was omitted from the study because he did not participate in the whole of reader’s workshop due to gifted education pullout. The group was comprised of 12 boys and 8 girls. Most students in the group were Caucasian, with that being the race of 65% of the group. The remaining students are Hispanic (20%), Asian (10%), and Black (5%). The teacher has a bachelor’s and master’s degree and has 18 years of experience prior to this year.

Materials and Procedures

As described previously, the classroom used an ELA program designed by our teacher team and the building’s instructional coach. The curriculum had been used for approximately three years with some modifications made by the team through a reflection process. The curriculum was taught in a reader’s workshop format. Freckle served as the blended learning component for word study, skill practice, and comprehension practice. Each student had access to a personal Chromebook and headphones with built-in microphones, so it was not necessary to share. Also, the classroom had a library consisting of over 700 books for students. The typical structure of reader’s workshop in the classroom is below.

(Farquhar, 2019)

Because the Freckle program counts minutes by how long the student has the Freckle screen open to an activity, and not the time interacting it, it is difficult to determine the average amount of time per day or week students spent on freckle. If students spend all of the recommended time working on the LMS, it should average approximately 175 minutes a week. This was calculated by the minutes per day of 41 multiplied by the average 5 day school week. Thirty minutes were subtracted per week to account for guided reading groups.

Measures

At the beginning of the school year, students were given three different reading and language arts diagnostics. Students were assessed for comprehension using the Fountas and Pinnel system (2010). Fountas and Pinnel assesses students reading level using ten criteria: genre/form, text structure, content, themes and ideas, language and literary features, sentence complexity, vocabulary, illustrations, and book and print features. (Fountas & Pinnel, 2010) Additionally, students were assessed for reading and language using the NWEA Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) test ("NWEA: Advancing growth for all students", 2019). The NWEA MAP test is a comprehensive reading test that evaluates students in the categories of literary language, craft, and structure, literary key ideas and details, informational text language, craft, and structure, informational text key ideas and details, and vocabulary, and ultimately assigns an overall reading level. Finally, students were assessed with a 5-30 minute comprehension pretest on Freckle (2019)

The Fountas and Pinnel and NWEA MAP tests will be readministered in the winter, after the second semester of school. Because that information is not currently available, the Freckle adaptive system for comprehension is the primary source of comprehension development. The adaptive system breaks each grade level down into three levels- A, B, and C. They represent the beginning, middle, and end of the year. Movement from A to B will constitute one level of growth.

Word Study growth was measured and monitored using the Word Study Matrix (Freckle, 2019). This matric illustrated the level at which students pre-tested and their growth throughout this study. There are 180 levels ranging from kindergarten to the end of sixth grade. For the purposes of this study, it should be noted that the fourth-grade range is from level 87 to 103.

Results

Comprehension levels in Freckle are adaptive, as such students consistently make positive and negative growth. These results explain the overall growth or lack thereof from the beginning of the study to the six-week mark. Eight students (40%) made at least one level’s growth. There were no students who stayed the same. Four students (20%) lost one level of growth. The remaining 8 students (40%) lost two levels of growth.

The adaptive word study program yielded extensive gains. Ten students pretested below grade level, 5 tested at grade level, and 7 tested above grade level. All students demonstrated growth with average growth being 8 levels per student, and the mode growth was 6. Outliers include students who made 16, 18, and 21 levels of growth.

("What are the Benefits of Blended Learning for Students? – USA TODAY Classifieds", 2019)

This study examined the efficacy of a blended learning approach, combining teacher-led instruction with an adapted technology-based instruction using the LMS called Freckle. Students spent approximately 35 minutes a day practicing word study, skills, and comprehension.

Overall comprehension growth was not considered satisfactory at this time. This may be due to a few factors. The LMS was new to the students, and they may need more time to adjust to it. Access to the full LMS system was new to the teacher, and she may need more time to learn how to use it well to achieve student outcomes. In the comprehension part of the program, there are many variables to consider. Each passage determines comprehension by the ability of students to answer four follow up questions. Some of these questions require more than one answer. In some cases, the LMS will instruct students to select “two answers” or “all that apply”. If the student does not select all the correct answers, the answer is deemed incorrect. The LMS also requires students to exhibit 80% accuracy which is difficult to do with four questions.

The comprehension passages are adaptive, so when students meet the accuracy requirements consistently they level up. However, overall, it may look as though the accuracy is low. According to Freckle (2019), students are always working at the top of their ability range, so they may struggle at first. Students may answer the first 20 questions inaccurately, but if they answer the next 20 questions correctly, they will have demonstrated mastery while only attaining 50% accuracy.

Word study growth was dramatically better for students for reasons similar to what was previously stated. Also, when word study lessons were repeated, the same words and processes were used. In this case, it is suggested that the repetitive nature is helpful for students to achieve understanding and mastery. It should be noted that goal-setting meetings were held regularly with all students regarding word study growth. Students were motivated to make their growth goal with the incentive of having free time during the next word study session. Also, the teacher would monitor the student’s growth regularly, and if she noticed that students appeared stuck on a level, she would coach them through the level or provide individual or small group practice for the student or students. It is quite possible that these variables played a significant role in students’ development.

Schechter, Macaruso, Kazakoff, and Brooke (2015) found positive results in a case study examing the efficacy of blended learning in the first and second grades. In their study students in the treatment group received the same face-to-face instruction as their peers in the control group (Schechter et al., 2015) while receiving additional instruction through the digital LMS called Core 5 (Schechter et al., 2015). Overall the results revealed significantly more growth in the blended learning classrooms. (Schechter et al., 2015).Students are more engaged in blended learning environments and benefit from immediate feedback as well ("The Benefits Of Blended Learning", 2019).

("The Benefits Of Blended Learning -", 2019)

There were several limitations to this study, including the sample size, lack of control, limited time frame, and lack of consistent ELA curriculum. Future studies will need to include a much larger population. Also, because of the short turnaround time of this study, it was not possible to establish a control group. This was also not possible because the ELA curriculum currently used by teachers in the district is inconsistent because it is teacher made by grade level team and by school.. The only consistent feature is that they are all standards-based, but it would be difficult to assess the validity of blended learning when the face-to-face approach is not the same.

A longitudinal study that spans an entire school year or multiple school years would be beneficial. Greater teacher preparation on the benefits and implementation of the LMS would be helpful as well. Also, a shared ELA curriculum would eliminate a significant variable that currently exists. An extended time frame would also allow teachers to measure growth with a multitude of measures, included NWEA MAP (2019) and Fountas and Pinnel (2019)

Additionally in the future, it would be interesting to see the results of student surveys and interviews that inquired about students' attitudes and motivation toward reading, serious gaming, and the adaptive format of the LMS. It seems currently that motivating factors including goal setting and a token reward did motivate students to progress through word study levels. It would be interesting to see how students feel about the comprehension portion of the LMS, the perception of having the “freedom to fail” (Dicheva et al., 2015).

At this time a blended learning component added to the ELA curriculum yields mixed measures. Students made terrific growth in word study, ranging from phonics to Greek and Latin roots, however, comprehension growth was questionable. The use of digital LMS did allow me to differentiate for students more easily, in both word study and comprehension. While students were taking part in the digital portion of the blended learning environment, I was able to pull some groups for goal setting and reteaching, but more time for this would benefit both teacher and student.

Allington, R. (2019). The Six Ts of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction. Retrieved 28 September 2019, from https://www.readingrockets.org/article/six-ts-effective-elementary-literacy-instruction

Dicheva, D., Dichev, C., Agre, G., & Angelova, G. (2015). Gamification in Education: A Systematic Mapping Study. Educational Technology & Society, 18(3). Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/39683102/Gamification_in_Education_A_Systematic_M20151104-8546-1cs0c99.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline; filename=Gamification_in_Education_A_Systematic_M.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A/20190908/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20190908T235108Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=3494e1a28030393d78c66e71d92d51de6a76886d56dad53c77ef059f5634f4c8

Duty, S. (2016). The Impact of Daily 5 and CAFE Literacy Framework on Reading Comprehension in Struggling Fourth Grade Readers: A Case Study (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. Retrieved from 10.15760/etd.2706

Farquhar, N. (2019) The Use of Multimodalities and Multiliteracies in Gamification and the Effects on Motivation: A Literature Review (Unpublished doctoral work). University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.

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Kieschnick, W. (2019). Bold School Teachers Elevate a Culture of “AND” | Weston Kieschnick | TEDxDakotaRidge. Retrieved 29 September 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEZGZFIApoc&t=728s

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