Colored Overlays: An Intervention Tool in Reading for the Grade Two Learners of Bongbongon Elementary School – Division of Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines

Reading is a foundation skill that plays a major role in a child’s academic success. It is also an ability that unlocks the door of learning and success. At the same time, reading can be very challenging, especially when the materials are unfamiliar, technical, and complex. The researcher thought of a material that could alleviate reading difficulties particularly the reading rate of the learners. This material is called Color Overlays. It is a type of tinted filter and is a plastic reading sheet tinted with color and placed over text to eliminate a wide range of reading difficulties such as low reading rate, accuracy, and comprehension. This research investigated the effects of Irlen’s Colored Overlays on reading rate as an intervention tool for the Grade Two Instructional Level of learners, with a class teacher initiating the study and a teacher-librarian conducting the assessment. All of the 52 learners were screened with a vision test. They were grouped into two wherein only the experimental group used the color overlays as their intervention. The result of the study implies that with or without the intervention, the reading rate of the learners is expected to increase. Therefore, color overlays made a difference in improving the reading rate of the learners.

Association between auditory temporal and visual processing in reading skill

ABSTRACT Purpose: to verify whether students screened with altered auditory temporal processing are more likely to present altered visual processing. Methods: the sample consisted of 68 children, aged from 9 to 12 years, 53% males, from the 5th and 6th grades of a public school. All children with alterations in the audiological or ophthalmological evaluation were excluded. The Duration Pattern Test (screening for auditory temporal skill), the Reading Perceptual Scale (visual stress symptom questionnaire and colored overlays selection) and the Rate of Reading Test (number of words correctly read per minute) were used. Appropriate statistical tests were applied adopting the significance level lower than 0.05. Results: participants screened with abnormal auditory processing had higher visual stress symptoms and lower reading rate, with a significant and moderate effect (p< 0.05; d< 0.71), when compared to their peers with normal auditory processing. Among the children with altered Duration Pattern Test, 58% improved the reading rate with the use of colored overlays, whereas 29% did so in the control group (Odds Ratio = 3.4, p = 0.017). Conclusion: children screened with altered auditory temporal processing presented a three times higher possibility of association with visual processing alterations, due to shared magnocellular system.