Press Release
Cornerstones: A New Approach to Literacy Development for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children
November 9, 2001
Technology-Infused Teaching Unit Based on PBS's BETWEEN THE LIONS®
WGBH Boston, MA -- The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) and Ohio State University have developed Cornerstones, an approach to literacy development for children who are deaf and hard of hearing, and have released the first Cornerstones teaching unit on the Web at http://ncam.wgbh.org/cornerstones.
The Cornerstones teaching unit on the web features an episode of BETWEEN THE LIONS, the award-winning PBS literacy series for beginning readers. The first available online teaching unit adopts the BETWEEN THE LIONS episode entitled "The Fox and the Crow." The purpose of this unit is to support reading, writing, vocabulary development, and decoding skill through the intensive study of a single story. Two additional teaching units based on other BETWEEN THE LIONS episodes, and an evaluation of the effectiveness of Cornerstones on students' word identification, word knowledge and comprehension are scheduled for 2002.
Resources on the Web site include:
Printable Lesson Guide
Designed to be used for about two hours a day over six days, it includes word study, group reading, independent reading, writing, and activities that reinforce the lessons.
The Story
Available as a 2 1/2 minute downloadable animated video clip featuring an American Sign Language storyteller, a printable storybook, and an illustrated and annotated online version.
Printable Games and Activities
Including word recognition flashcards, crossword puzzles, writing exercises, template pages to create your own book, and sentence mix-and-match.
Online Games
Including "Pounce!" an interactive word-matching game, "Think and Sink," a golf-themed game to construct words, and "Who is it?," a reading comprehension activity.
The majority of children who are deaf and hard of hearing are educated in public schools, many in mainstream classrooms where they may be the only student with limited hearing. Cornerstones acknowledges that many schools are lacking materials that are well-suited to the learning needs of students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Following principles of universal design for learning, Cornerstones adapts to the various needs of learners by providing alternative and flexible ways of getting information. Teachers have the flexibility to customize their instruction according to their students' learning and communications needs, backgrounds and preferences. Because of its flexibility, Cornerstones is not only for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, but for any children who struggle with reading and writing.
Mardi Loeterman is the project director, Dr. Peter Paul of Ohio State University is the principal investigator. Cornerstones is funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education under its Steppingstones Program. The tools developed and the site's creation were the result of Phase 1 funding. Cornerstones has recently been funded for Phase 2, enabling development of further teaching units, tools and classroom testing.
About NCAM
The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), a division of The Media Access Group at Boston's public broadcaster WGBH, is a research and development facility that works to make media accessible to underserved populations such as people with disabilities, minority-language users, and people with low literacy skills. NCAM projects and initiatives expand the reach and refine such technologies as captioning and description, while breaking new ground in the fields of technology, media, disability, and education. NCAM has developed guidelines for editing captions for struggling readers, which are now available on the PBS children's series Arthur, and has demonstrated and investigated the use of captioning software in the classroom to improve learning. NCAM works with standards bodies and industry to develop and implement open technical standards for multimedia, advanced television, distance learning and convergent media that ease implementation, foster growth and lay common groundwork for equal access to new technologies. For more information, visit http://access.wgbh.org.
About Between the Lions
BETWEEN THE LIONS, a PBS kids' series, is named for a family of lions -- Theo, Cleo, Lionel, and Leona -- that runs a library like no other on earth. The doors "between the lions" swing open to reveal a magical place where characters pop off the pages of books, vowels sing, and words take on lives of their own. The series combines innovative puppetry, animation, live action, and music to achieve its educational mission of helping young children learn to read. BETWEEN THE LIONS is produced for PBS by the award-winning team of WGBH Boston and Sirius Thinking, Ltd., two experts in the creative union of educational goals with laugh-out-loud children's television. For more information on BETWEEN THE LIONS, visit http://www.pbskids.org/lions.
About WGBH
WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public broadcasting producer. More than one-third of PBS's prime-time lineup and companion Web content as well as many public radio favorites are produced by WGBH. Its best-known productions include NOVA, Frontline, American Experience, Antiques Roadshow, ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre, This Old House, Arthur, and Zoom on PBS and The World and Sound & Spirit on public radio. WGBH also is a pioneer in educational multimedia and in technologies and services that make media accessible to people with disabilities. Since its establishment in 1951, WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors, including Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Award-- even two Oscars. For more information visit http://www.wgbh.org.
Contact:
Mary Watkins, Media Access Group at WGBH
mary_watkins@wgbh.org
617.300.3700 voice/fax
617.300.2489 TTY
