“I’ve seen the quality of comments [and] talk improve among the students. The other thing that I felt was really good was when they looked at the learning analytics maps they realised a lot of things about themselves…. They were motivated to want to do more and to be more engaged in what they were doing.”
– Teacher
“eye opening”, “helps me to know my strengths and weaknesses” “shows which skills and [critical] lenses I have not used”
– Student feedback
How Can WiREAD Help Your Students?Provides a web-based platform to enable students and teachers to view and analyse the level and quality of their participation
Why WiREAD?
As teachers, we want our students to be able to read a given text critically, and be able to articulate their understanding of the text. WiREAD seeks to nurture these abilities through a web-based environment with simple tools for learners to guide their reading and empower discussions.
To scaffold students to read a text critically, WiREAD provides students with a set of critical lenses adapted from Paul’s Wheel of Reasoning. To enable students to use these critical lenses in a discussion of the text, WiREAD provides a set of comment types.
WiREAD was successfully piloted in one mainstream secondary school over two years, involving 1 HOD, 6 teachers and 379 students using 20 multimodal texts. Teacher participants observed an improvement in the quality of students’ critical discussions of the multimodal texts. Students’ performance in post-tests also showed a significant improvement in their critical reading fluency performance.
How Does WiREAD Work?
Using two guiding structures, critical lenses and comment types, WiREAD scaffolds students to first read a given text critically, and then use the critical lenses in an engaging discussion involving various comment types.
Step 1: Critical reading
To read a given text, students apply one or more critical lenses, a set of perspectives for thinking adapted from Paul’s Wheel of Reasoning.
Wearing the critical lens(es), students consider the following in analysing the text:
Step 2: Collaborative discussion
Students use the comment types as a guide to discuss the given text. The varied comment types guide students to use the critical lenses in different ways: to ideate, justify, validate, challenge or clarify.
For example, a student may challenge (comment type) a peer’s analysis of the audience (critical lens). A student may also use evidence to justify (comment type) his/her analysis of the author’s viewpoint (critical lens).
Step 3: Formative assessment using the online platform
Students and teachers use “My Learning Dashboard” to analyse the quality of their discussion, enabling them to modify their behaviour to achieve desired outcomes.
Evidence From WiREAD Research
How Can Teachers Get Started?
Without the WiREAD Programme
As students become familiar with the critical lenses and comment types, they can simultaneously use multiple lenses and comments types.
With the WiREAD Programme
Research TeamTo learn more about WiREAD, please contact Knowledge Mobilisation Unit (KMb@OER) at oerkmob@nie.edu.sg
Co-Principal Investigator (Lead Research Investigator)
Dr Jennifer TAN (formerly of NIE)
Principal Investigator
Mr Albert LIM, Principal, Ngee Ann Secondary School (NAS), MOE
Co-Principal Investigator
Mdm Muneira DAUD, HOD English Language, NAS, MOE
MOE Partners
Ms TAY Siu Hua, MOE
Research Assistant
Ms Christin JONATHAN, Office of Educational Research (OER), NIE
Software Engineer
AcknowledgmentsThis research on WiREAD was funded by Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) under the eduLab Programme (NRF2013-EDU001-EL019) and administered by National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore NRF and NIE.
This knowledge resource was written by Dr Jeanne Marie Ho and Ms Monica Ong; updated by Ms Monica Lim and Mr Jared Martens Wong on 4 January 2022.
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