Bringing Stories to Life

Little Planet Series teaches children to love reading and writing

Can putting kids in front of a computer screen help them learn to love reading and writing? Spend a few minutes watching children use Vanderbilt's Little Planet Literacy Series, and you'll realize the answer is yes.

Used in about 1,000 classrooms nationwide, the series uses animated video stories - combined with computer software and proven instructional techniques - to help young, at-risk readers improve their reading comprehension and ability to write.

It's getting rave reviews and this year was the national winner in the Best Curriculum for Early Education from the Software Publishers Association's coveted Codie Awards.

The most heartfelt reviews, however, come from the teachers who use the program. "The activities keep them (students) so excited," says Moreen Muldoon, a special education teacher at Nashville's Percy Priest Elementary School. "I thought they might get bored, but they wanted to do it every day! They did more writing for (The Little Planet) than they did in their journals all year. I remember one child, a first-grader, spent one day writing two whole pages (while working with the series). I couldn't get her to go to gym class because she wanted to keep writing!"


Students write their own stories using the Little Planet Literacy Series, developed at Peabody's Learning Technology Center. Here Gerald Simpson receives guidance from his first-grade teacher, Trudy Chandler, at Whitsitt Elementary School./Photo by Billy Kingsley.


The Little Planet Series grew out of research showing that for children to become successful readers, they must be able to construct mental models, have a firm grasp of how stories work and be able to see a sort of animated vision of a story in their minds.

Many youngsters learn this skill almost effortlessly, as they sit in a parent's lap looking at pictures while listening to books being read. But other children - especially those who haven't had much exposure to books - arrive at school with little or no understanding of story structure, with no mental framework upon which to project the stories they hear or read. Without this framework, children find it difficult to make sense of stories and difficult to recall those stories long enough to think deeply about them or participate in class discussions.

It was these children that Little Planet was initially designed to help. But research over the last seven years has shown that the series enriches learning for young readers of all ability levels. Here's how it works:

Gathered around a classroom computer or video monitor, children begin by watching an animated anchor story developed by Vanderbilt researchers, working in collaboration with the Nashville-based educational software firm Applied Learning Technologies, Inc. In the story, a group of fanciful woodland characters must outwit a villain or trickster and can only succeed by writing and reading books.

After viewing the cartoon, children participate in a variety of whole-class, small-group, and individual activities using computers and videodiscs as well as books, paper and pencils.

At several points in the process, the children get to be authors. Working in small groups, they watch as the computer presents them with a series of pictures from one of the animated cartoons. For each picture, the children create a narration and enter it into the computer, using both print and their voices. When the students' retelling is complete, they can show a multimedia version of the story to their classmates, complete with customized music and voice-overs. They can also take home a printed book complete with illustrations to share with family members.

Such activities can stretch over many weeks or even an entire semester. Most importantly, all of the activities relate back to the anchor story, an arrangement that helps children develop a deepening understanding of the anchor story and of how stories work in general. Additionally, each anchor story is accompanied by three animated folk tales offering a variety of related computer, video and paper-based activities.

"What's been exciting over the years is to see how video and the computer software have the flexibility to challenge kids of all skill levels," said Diana Sharp, a senior research associate at Vanderbilt's Learning Technology Center. Sharp is co-director of the seven-year-old project along with LTC co-directors Ted Hasselbring, Susan Goldman, and John Bransford. "One thing the software allows you to do is to instantly revisit any part of the story while you're discussing it. And because of that, you can pose much more complex problems to children and provide different levels of support for different children.

"For example, you might ask 'How do you think this character was feeling in this part of the story and why?' Some kids may just need to see a still picture, and they'll recall the whole passage and be able to give you a thoughtful answer. For other kids, you may need to go back and replay the whole scene and even point out the things that help you understand how the character is feeling. But with this technology, you can do whatever it takes."

"One advantage of the video and computer software support is that they let beginning readers take a more active role," Sharp said. "That's because any difficulties they may have with print - difficulties that would be huge obstacles if they were only using books - don't get in the way of their ability to participate in the discussion.

"Another advantage of the video is just the sense of community it can create in a classroom," she said. "It's highly motivating, and everyone can be drawn into the story no matter what their background knowledge. Plus the children can take a copy of the video stories home to share with their family and friends, which extends the sense of community even more."

The project has been such a success that Sharp and her colleagues are now taking it several steps further. They are in the process of developing a Little Planet literacy curriculum for students in the third through fifth grades and they are working to extend the Little Planet series to focus on math and science activities.

"Our ultimate goal," Sharp said, "is to create an integrated math, science and literacy curriculum for students in kindergarten through fifth grade."