Tools to improve literacy difficulties

 

Training tools corelated with the students results on national exams, for improving their literacy difficulties

 

The results obtained by the students from the countries involved in this partnership, at their national exams, are showing that a high percentage need help for improving their literacy skills and passing the exams. Based on our shared experience, we build up the following table, containing a series of training tools that could be applied in the classroom or in remedial sessions on small groups or individually, to make learning and understanding more easy and to put the students in a variety of learning situations. We kept in mind the different types of intelligence and learning styles we are working with, as well as the student's need for guidance in selecting the relevant information. 

The pandemic situation showed us that students are more keen on learning if we use interactive and collaborative tools, so we focused on the positive side ot if, selecting the digital instruments that we applied during online teaching, those applications that were well received by the students and that contributed to improving their school results.  

 

Literacy difficulties encountered by the students participating in national exams	Training tools to improve the student`s results at national exams
Primary school students, participating in national evaluation
Difficulties in writing a text on the basis of helpful questions	Readwritethink – is an application that guides teachers in lesson planning; Google docs for giving  feedback; Think-Pair-Share – a collaborative learning / teaching strategy; EdPuzzle - helps students understand the text.
Difficulties in writing functional texts	Oscrisoare – letter writing tool; Canva - posters, presentations, fliers; Padlet - for short texts, comments; Linoit - for short texts, comments; Pixton - story writing based on pictures and comics; Animaker - story writing based on pictures and comics; Plotagon - story writing based on pictures and comics; Bookcreator – for creating stories, small books and presentations.
Difficulties in making associations, not being able to visualise, internalise and make connections between the ideas	EdPuzzle - helps students understand a given text, with the help of short questions, integrated into the text; Toytheater – contains educational games for developing maths skills and literacy skills; MyKoolio – provides lessons, exercises and problems for language, maths and geography, for primary and secondary school students.
Difficulties in systematically and faithfully receives all ideas and information from literary texts	Mindmeister - gives a systematic view over the subject at hand; Prezi - helps students focus on the notions presented within a lesson; Liveworksheets – provides interactive worksheets for students, which can be filled in online or offline; LearningApps - supports learning and teaching processes with small interactive, multimedia exercises; Wordwall – uses games to make learning easy and fun.
Difficulties in complex calculations (multiplication and division)	Photomath – scanning the exercise students find out the method; Microsoft maths - helps with the procedure of multiplying and dividing numbers; Dudamath – an app for students and teachers, is an integrated environment for interactive exploration of mathematical concepts and problem solving; Khan Academy – offers explanations on different mathematical problems.
Difficulties in difficulties in solving exercises with several operations	Symbaloo Learning Paths – useful for creating a gaming-style digital lesson plan; Dudamath – an app for students and teachers, is an integrated environment for interactive exploration of mathematical concepts and problem solving; Khan Academy – offers explanations on different mathematical problems.
Difficulties in problem solving	Symbaloo Learning Paths – useful for creating a gaming-style digital lesson plan; Dudamath – an app for students and teachers, is an integrated environment for interactive exploration of mathematical concepts and problem solving; Khan Academy – offers explanations on different mathematical problems.
Secondary school students, participating in national evaluation
Difficulties in solving reasoning items	Examenultau - is a platform used by students from 5th to 12th grade, to learn for their national exams; Readwritethink - guides teachers in lesson planning.
Difficulties in analysing the characteristics of “some relationships, phenomena or processes specific to mathematics and/ or sciences, starting from real or hypothetical situations	Science Fun - helps students to understand the different phenomenon, by the use of experiments; Science Practical Simulator - allows both the modelling and completion of science practical activities in a safe and innovative way. The app is easy to follow, with the descriptions and explanations of these concepts broken down into stages that supports every ability of learner.  TinkerBox - This is an action and reaction type puzzler where students can place a variety of levers, pulleys, gears, springs and more into a situation to solve a problem. Amazing Science Facts - From physics to chemistry and natural sciences, this app brings fun to any lesson. You and your students will no doubt be inspired by the fascinating facts it throws out about the world around us.
Difficulties in interpreting some problem-situations specific to mathematics and/or sciences by integrating knowledge from different fields	Academia ABC - offers lessons and exercises to help students overcome their learning difficulties; CrashCourse videos -  provide full video courses on a multitude of various scientific topics. On top of being produced and hosted brilliantly, the videos will assist in explaining hard to grasp scientific concepts.  Veritasium - The channel captivates the audience with mind-blowing experiments, interesting concepts and brilliant presenting by Derek. The creator of Veritasium, Dr. Derek Muller was the winner of the Streamy award for Science and Education in 2017. Vsauce- The channel was created by Michael Stevens in 2010 and has since gathered one of the largest followings of any science channel on Youtube. Michael has the ability to break down the most complex topics and ideas in an easy to understand way. His videos are always captivating and he has had an array of famous people featured in his videos, including Sir David Attenborough, Adam Savage, (Mythbusters) Chris Pratt, among others.
High school students, participating in national evaluation
Difficulties in addressing  the subjective items	Examenultau - is a platform used by students from 5th to 12th grade, to learn for their national exams; Online dictionaries –Thesaurus - for elevating and improving the speech, writing, and vocabulary with the tips.  Cathoven dictionary - using artificial intelligence, it can determine the difficulty of any text, analyse text characteristics, extract key teaching points according to the students’ level. Oxford dictionary - new grammar pages combine clear explanations with interactive exercises to test your understanding.
Difficulties in understanding the content of ideas in a text, the requirements of exercises and problems	GeoGebra - is a mathematics learning and teaching software that provides tools for studying geometry, algebra and analysis; Khan Academy - produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators. It has produced over 8,000 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects, originally focusing on mathematics and sciences.  EDUKA - provides theoretical knowledge, exercises, tests in different subject eTest.lt –online platform for creating tests and practising different subjects Emapamokos.lt - online practice platform for differentiation and individualisation. Matific - is a fantastic tool for teaching mathematics intuitively and introducing students to scientific thinking.”
Spelling, punctuation and expression mistakes	Izibac - Romanian platform useful to students in understanding learning contents; Microsoft 365 Word application - has an embedded editor tool that analyses documents and offers suggestions for spelling, grammar, and stylistic issues, like making sentences more concise, choosing simpler words, or writing with more formality.
Lacks originality in the drafting of texts	Izibac - Romanian platform useful to students in understanding learning contents. Duplichecker - detects plagiarism from a text http://plagiarisma.net/ free online tool for avoiding plagiarism Paraphrase - a tool for sentence rephrasing and essay rewriting
Difficulties in understanding and following the given tasks and instructions	Liveworksheets - provides a wide variety of tasks for comprehension; Egzaminatorius - provides exam tasks examples of different subjects.
Lacks interest in reading e.g. books, long-read articles	Readtheory - provides interactive reading exercises and keeps students engaged and interested; Squid app - provides the texts from the newspapers on breaking news with reading comprehension exercises; Readingtrainer-  provides everything you need to read texts of all types faster, more effectively and with better retention.
Difficulties in structuring the written texts e.g. essays, letters	Grammarly - indicates grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, logics errors and gives solutions for correcting; Hemingwayapp - in edit mode it guides the writer to avoid certain loopholes. It focuses on the quality of the text; it will not correct spelling mistakes. Webfx - provides a quick and easy way to test the readability of your work
Difficulties in applying what they have learned in real life situations and difficulties in processing and depicting physics via graphs	Phet.simulations - provides simulations for chemistry, physics, maths and biology provided in order to make students see what they have learned applied to real life situations; Humanoid 4D - is an augmented reality application that allows students to explore human body parts in details.
Difficulties applying maths formulae to laws of physics	ogmmateryal.eba.gov.tr/ - the official page prepared by the Turkish Ministry of National Education General Directorate of Secondary Education. You can find interactive books, games and activities. Play.google.com/store/apps - is the official Mobile Question Bank application prepared by the Turkish Ministry of National Education General Directorate of Secondary Education.  Newtonium - Physics Simulator app is a unique app for solving physics problems. The application calculates forces exerted on a body and simulates the resulting motion in two dimensions, with three degrees of freedom. You can set physical properties such as mass, velocity, size, position and many more. Running a simulation will see the forces in action where you can specify conditions and change the models variables.
Difficulties in connecting chemical symbols with their meaning (problems memorising)	Quizlet - a free website providing learning tools for students, including flashcards, study and game modes.  Flashcardmachine - a  free service for creating web-based study flashcards that can be shared with others. Technotes - a website with  interactive tools for learning the periodic table. Study - a website for quizes, videos and tutoring materials and resourses. Memorize - a website that offers tecniques and videos for memorising the periodic table.
Difficulties in the use of language, structural analysis of literary works, reading comprehension of different types of texts and writing different forms of written expressions	During regular classes, teachers should allocate more time from regular teaching for: use of the language, for use of the theory of literature in the structural analysis of literary works, reading comprehension of different types of texts, for writing different forms of written expression; Grammarly - an overall grammar checker; Mondly AR - is a virtual language learning assistant; Hemingwayapp - helps with producing cohesive texts.
Difficulties in acquiring knowledge in Geometry	Geometry Pad - an app for creating fundamental geometric shapes,for exploring and changing their properties and calculating metrics; Geogebra - for teaching and learning Math. Free digital tools for class activities, graphing, geometry, collaborative whiteboard and more; Cabri - a simple and comprehensive software to understand 3D geometry in the classroom; Sketchpad made use of drawing as a computer's unique interaction medium. The system consisted of input, output as well as computation programs that allowed it to decipher information sketched directly on a computer screen.
Difficulties in solving questions from scientific literacy	Attention should be paid to work with data, reading graphs and tables. Science Practical Simulator - is an educational app that allows students to complete practical activities in a safe and engaging way. National Geographic ScienceLab - is a website with experiments, videos, articles and more. National Geographic Website and TV series and films - ”Science of stupid”  WeAreTeachers - is a website for teachers and high school students for experiments and ideas for science experiments. Study.com - is a website for quizes, videos and tutoring materials and resourses. WowScience - is a website that offers science games, activities, apps, videos experiments and other websites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This project was funded by the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author. The European Commission and the National Agency are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.