Keys to English Print:

As published in Odyssey, Fall 2003
Bridges in Illinois...in PDF (8 pages, 122 kb)
Bridges in Arizona...in PDF (12 pages, 292 kb)

BRIDGES IN ILLINOIS
A New Program Connects Students to Learning

Jump to: Bridges in Arizona

By Joan M. Forney and Andrea Simeone

The Illinois School for the Deaf (ISD) wanted a program that would truly make a difference in deaf children’s learning. So when ISD individuals Sue Brosmith, elementary school principal; Rhonda Downs, learning resources educator; and Dr. Lori McKenzie, clinical psychologist, returned from a workshop on Bridges Learning Systems at the Tennessee School for the Deaf in spring 2001 and lobbied to establish a Bridges Lab at ISD, we decided to do it.

Establishing a Bridges Lab was a huge commitment. ISD had to make changes in the existing program that would allow staff to be assigned to Bridges and locate an appropriate classroom setting. Funding is always a challenge and resources were adjusted from ISD’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant. Other donated funds were used to purchase supplementary materials.

History of the Bridges Program

The Bridges program grew out of research and assessment tools developed during World War II that enabled the military to reduce its failure rate for training pilots from 35 percent to 9 percent or less (Meeker & Meeker, 1999).

Bridges focuses on at-risk students. It is based on the premise that the ability to learn is important and should be given as much emphasis as the teaching of prescribed content. The program is based on the premise that the brain’s potential can be developed at any age, partly through a pattern of exercises. It is congruent with today’s description of human intellect in terms of multiple intelligences. Research with at-risk hearing students indicates that those who participate in the Bridges program experience significant academic growth (Bradfield & Slocumb, 1997a, 1997b; Meeker, 1998).

Students in the Bridges program at the Illinois School for the Deaf work on skills in memory, sensory integration, and focusing. Photos by Andrea Simeone.

Bridges at ISD

ISD adopted a streamlined model of the Bridges program. It was staffed by Bridges specialist Andrea Simeone, and two technicians, teacher’s assistant Lori Slater and Dianne Hall, the parent of an ISD student. Fifty-five students attend the Bridges Lab. The main focus is elementary students, but all ages of students are referred if they have been identified as having difficulties with learning in the classroom.

The precision of the lab setup is crucial to the success of the program. ISD and Bridges signed a contract regarding the fee for the total program that included the cost for materials and equipment. Under this contract, Bridges supplied most of the items used in the program, i.e., three rebounder mini-trampolines, three balance boards, bean bag balls, a variety of charts, workbooks for pencil and paper tasks, and 50 student learning kits. The ISD carpenter made walking boards for students to use in developing their sense of balance. The Bridges program also supplied cassette recorders and cassettes that could be used for hard of hearing students. Deaf students used visual strategies, including directing a laser pointer at specific shapes—as opposed to listening to a cassette— during exercises.

After intensive training provided to ISD staff by the Bridges consultant, ISD began a comprehensive assessment to determine why each student was not learning or why each student had difficulty with learning. The staff completed assessments in cognitive skills, sensory integration, focusing skills, and reading. With the results of the assessment in hand, comprehensive treatment plans were formulated to address each student’s needs. The individualized treatment plans were coordinated with the student’s Individualized Education Program.

Students generally participate in the Bridges Lab for two 40-minute sessions each week. During this time period, they spend about 20 minutes working with pen and pencil on development of cognitive skills, such as memory, and 20 minutes doing physical exercises that develop focusing and sensory integration skills.

“The students love coming to the lab!” noted Andrea Simeone. “They arrive and independently start working…Their desire to practice and progress to successful performance gives an incredible boost in their self-confidence, while at the same time they develop and strengthen the skills necessary for learning! From kindergartners to seniors in high school, the students take ownership of their individual programs!”

[ Top ]

Monitoring Progress

Since this program is new to ISD, the school is committed to determining if students are positively affected by their Bridges experiences. Baseline data has been collected on all students enrolled in the program, including scores from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, results of visual perceptual testing, and scores on the Stanford Achievement Test-Hearing Impaired. This information, and the assessments provided by the Bridges program itself, will be monitored and used to measure student progress. We will use this data on cognitive skills and achievement tests to see what the students are learning in this program, to determine if this really does work, and to see if it really makes a difference in achievement scores.

In addition, ISD is doing informal evaluations of the program. As part of the informal evaluation, students are asked to describe how they feel Bridges is assisting them with learning.

This is one account : My name is Alan Bright* and I… have been involved in the Bridges Lab since August 2002. I have learning difficulties in reading and spelling. Since starting in Bridges, I have noticed that I have started to improve in remembering the order in spelling words and am reading better. I have finished all Sensory Integration and Focusing Skills exercises so all that is left for me to do is my workbook!…After all that, I will take a post-test and compare it with my pre-test. I am thankful that we started the Bridges Lab here and hope it helps others like me!

Today Alan is showing improvement in the area of self-determination. He has evaluated his progress and sees a positive impact on his schoolwork.

[ Top ]

LOCAN

After implementing the Bridges program, the consultants from Bridges and ISD staff felt that there was still an unmet need for non-readers. In order to address this problem, ISD, with the assistance of the Bridges consultants, introduced LOCAN (Language Objectified for Concept Attainment and Narration). LOCAN, defined by the consultants as “an easy-to-learn, concrete language for expressing thoughts and ideas,” uses glyphs, or simple figures, to represent concepts. Each glyph represents a single concept and students can “read” the glyphs as a figural precursor to reading print.

“This makes the language directly accessible to the learner and, thereby, reduces reading to its absolute basics” (Meeker & Meeker, 1999).

Children recognize logos, stop signs, trademarks, and simple symbolic illustrations at a very early age. With the mediation of glyphs, students are able to develop the learning skills necessary to read and comprehend the written word.

Rhonda Downs, learning resources educator, noted that, “While working with elementary students, it has been encouraging to see these figural learners seem to quickly grasp the meanings of the LOCAN glyphs. Often they are able to transfer this to relational thinking.”

The Bridges program is just beginning at ISD, and we are still determining what the next steps will be. For example, we are considering an additional part of the Bridges program—the Personal Career Evaluation part of the system—that assists students in making career choices.

Can Bridges really make the difference at ISD and other schools and programs for the deaf? Can achievement scores dramatically improve? Will this program make a difference in the behavior and attention of students? Through careful measurement and documentation of our students’ progress, ISD hopes to help provide answers to these very significant questions.

If you are interested in finding out more information about the Bridges program, visit the Bridges Web site at: http://www.bridgeslearning.com/Programs/references.cfm.

* This student’s name has been changed to protect privacy.

References

Bradfield, P., & Slocumb, P. (1997a). Student performance in SOI model schools in the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District. Rosenberg, TX: Unpublished study.

Bradfield, P., & Slocumb, P. (1997b). Travis Elementary: An interim evaluation report: Year two. Rosenberg, TX: Unpublished study.

Meeker, M. (1969). Programs paradigm, Internet Web site bridges learning systems. Retrieved from http://www.bridgeslearning.com/Pro grams/references.cfm.

Meeker, M. (2001). Personal career evaluation. Vida, OR: SOI Systems.

Meeker, M., & Meeker, R. (1999). Bridges training manual and interpretation guide. Vida, OR: SOI Systems.

Meeker, R. (1998). The SOI model school program at Travis Elementary: Results from the first two years. SOI News, 25(2), 103-104.

[ Top ]

BRIDGES IN ARIZONA
Building Minds Ready for Reading

Bridges in Arizona...in PDF (12 pages, 292 kb)

By Kim Atwill, Sara Briggs, and Maureen Gallucci

“According to current test results, your child has made no growth in reading compared to testing completed three years ago.” As educational diagnosticians working at a day school for deaf students, we have informed parents of their child’s lack of reading progress too often. We knew something must be amiss. Then we discovered a unique program—Bridges (Meeker & Meeker, 1995), a reading remediation program where students in socked feet practice sensory exercises and student frustration is replaced with smiles of success.

Brittany, a social 10-year-old who perplexes teachers with her limited reading ability, enters the Bridges lab, immediately removes her shoes, and leaves them by the door. She and her six classmates check the schedule to determine who will start with exercises and who will start with workbooks. Seeing that she will begin with exercises, Brittany locates her exercise folder—otherwise known as an individualized treatment plan.

Photography Courtesy of Bridges Learning Systems, Inc.

From several highlighted choices, Brittany selects Arrows Opposite, a sensory integration exercise. As part of this exercise, Brittany tries to produce the opposite of an arm-position pattern posted on the wall while at the same time maintaining a constant, rhythmic bounce on a mini-bouncer. After several independent practices, Brittany believes she can achieve perfection and calls a specialist over to watch. Brittany loses her rhythm once and, hence, is not yet perfect. She tries again. This time Brittany and the specialist agree she has 100 percent mastery. The specialist checks off an R, for replication of a perfect performance, in Brittany’s treatment plan.

Brittany has time for one more exercise. She selects Suspended Letter Ball, an exercise that develops focusing skills. In this exercise, Brittany maintains her balance on a rocker board while focusing on a letter presented on a ball. The ball is suspended from the ceiling and follows a revolving circular path at eye level in front of Brittany. This is one of Brittany’s favorite exercises and she earns an R after five minutes of steady eye contact without extraneous head movement.

The 50-minute class is half over and Brittany and her classmates who have been working on exercises now turn their focus to workbooks. The classmates who have been working in notebooks turn to select their exercises. Brittany begins work on a page designed to help her develop semantic systems. In this pen and pencil activity, figures are presented in a pattern representing directions. For example, an upward triangle means up one stair, two upward triangles mean up two stairs, and so on, while conversely one downward triangle means down one stair. The goal is to follow this stream of figures, discern what they mean, and follow the instructions to an end point. Later Brittany will complete a similar task in which the directions will be presented in printed sentences.

What is Bridges?

Bridges is a multi-dimensional program created to develop cognitive abilities related to reading, math, and writing. The program is implemented through pullout intervention in the Bridges Lab. The lab provides an individualized program for improving sensory integration skills, focusing skills, cognition skills, and memory skills. The sensory integration and focusing skill exercises range in cognitive difficulty from foundational to strengthening to challenging. The third element utilized in the Bridges lab is a workbook building cognitive skills. Lastly, the memory lessons include an organized array of memory games, initially recalling figures (animals), then symbols (numbers), and finally semantic items (words). The Bridges program stresses the importance of following this order—figural, symbolic, semantic— when developing new skills (Meeker & Meeker, 1999). Math educators have followed this pattern for years. Students are exposed to new concepts using concrete objects (figural), with a transition to written digits (symbolic), and culmination with application through word problems (semantic) (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989).

To further explain how Bridges improves reading, we return to Brittany and her exercises. To master Arrows Opposite, one of the most challenging sensory integration exercises and one of the most cognitively significant, Brittany—and every Bridges student— must:

• maintain an easy rhythm and prescribed posture (similar to achieving and maintaining a comfortable reading position);
• smoothly scan from left to right and top to bottom without repeating or omitting symbols (similar to reading multiple lines of text);
• accurately discriminate shapes and symbols, then rotate them mentally (similar to identifying a printed word and linking semantic content within a given sentence); and
• maintain intense concentration for 30 shapes, approximately 45 seconds (similar to reading a complete sentence or short paragraph).

To master Suspended Letter Ball, an intermediate focusing skill exercise, every Bridges student must:

• maintain balance on a balance board and prescribed posture (similar to attaining a body position that allows a student to direct all mental energy towards reading);
• minimize head movement while smoothly moving eyes left to right and back (similar to the left-to-right and return sweep involved in reading); and
• maintain intense concentration for five minutes as would be needed when visualizing a paragraph.

[ Top ]

Why Bridges?

The diagnostic team at the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf (PDSD) found that many of our students showed deficits in visual focusing and sensory integration areas. Students were slow to discriminate between visually similar words (e.g., but and bat). Additionally, struggling readers were observed losing their place, and in extreme cases their balance, while scanning a line of print. Teachers often assumed students had already developed these basic skills as most children develop these skills before entering kindergarten, at home, or in preschool. Additionally, the diagnosticians identified many students who had short term memory weaknesses that prohibited easy reading (Marschark, 1993), limited visual processing skills (Emmorey, 2002), and reflected poor concentration. Some of these deaf and hard of hearing students were labeled“learning disabled.”

The diagnostic team gathered materials from a variety of publishers and tried to create a remediation program. We worked with some of the learning disabled students individually, and we observed some improvement. Still, limited resources and time, as well as an overall lack of cohesiveness, left us dissatisfied. Bridges solved our problem.

Bridges is a program that emphasizes the development of cognitive skills that children draw on when learning to read, write, and compute. Bridges’ motto is: Cognition before content (Meeker & Meeker, 1999). The Bridges program also links assessment with intervention. The goal is to identify strengths and weaknesses in four areas essential for learning: sensory integration skills, visual focusing, cognition, and memory abilities. There are two components to the assessment: perceptual screening and cognition evaluation.

Perceptual Screening

The Structure of Intellect Evaluation The 13 students completing the Bridges program in 2001-2002 show an increase in the median stanine scores in each of the measured categories.

See this chart in PDF

Perceptual Screening examines the child’s sensory integration and focusing skills (Meeker & Meeker, 1995). Many deaf children lack the early childhood experiences necessary to naturally acquire these skills. For example, research has shown that in comparison with hearing students, deaf and hard of hearing students frequently have overprotective parents (e.g., Spencer & Gutfreund, 1990) or additional medical problems (e.g., cytomegalovirus, cerebral palsy, meningitis) that correlate with motor delays. The perceptual screening assesses three sensory integration areas: balance, one of the basic motor skills and a precursor for mental development; crossing the midline, a physical reflection of the brain’s ability to plan and perform more complex tasks in proper sequence; and orientation of the body in space, a detailed mental representation of oneself within the environment.

The second half of the perceptual screening investigates the child’s focusing skills, which include both acuity and functional vision abilities. The focusing skills screening examines five areas: teaming, measuring how successfully the eyes work together to focus; aiming at the target, measuring how the eyes are able to maintain focus; measuring how the eyes handle shifts between seatwork and board work; measuring how the eyes work as they move across a page; and measuring how the eyes work together in targeting an object. When these skills are weak, students may experience an inefficient visual system prone to double vision, perceptual reversals, and losing their place easily in text, either jumping from word to word or line to line.

Reading requires smooth scanning across a line of print. Focusing skills are prerequisite to sight vocabulary memorization, application of phonetic training, and development of reading comprehension strategies. All of these techniques occur assuming intact visual systems. Deaf children have an identified weakness in auditory perception and are twice as likely as their hearing peers to have additional visual impairments yet vision is an area frequently overlooked in deaf children (Lawson & Mykleburst, 1970). At PDSD, approximately 39 percent of the learning disabled students wear glasses or have vision issues compared to 23 percent in the group with no additional disabilities. The ability to accurately and effortlessly perceive letters across a given line of print is the foremost skill in reading readiness.

The perceptual screening tool used to evaluate these skills contains a variety of motor exercises, from wiggling fingers on a directed hand to following an object horizontally left to right. The Bridges technicians are trained to observe and score the students as they perform these exercises to ensure that the individual treatment plan is created based on each student’s needs.

[ Top ]

Cognitive Evaluation

Reading Comprehension The Stanford 9 reading comprehension results from the 12 graduates show a 44-point increase in median scaled score points after the completion of the Bridges program.

See this chart in PDF

Cognitive Evaluation consists of the Structure of Intellect Learning Abilities Test (Meeker & Meeker, 1995), which investigates three main learning styles: figural, symbolic, and semantic. These areas are further sub-divided into operations specifying the cognitive skill needed to complete the task and include: comprehension, memory, evaluation, convergent production (problem solving), and divergent production (creativity). The goal is to determine each student’s current abilities and then cultivate the specific mental abilities each student needs in order to learn to read. For example, a student weak in the evaluation of figural units will show visual discrimination miscues such as misreading letters and affixes. A weakness in memory for symbolic systems may disrupt a student’s ability to recall a complete sentence and reduce comprehension.

At PDSD:
Three Years Points to Growth

In the 2000-2001 school year, the Bridges Lab served 23 students, first through sixth grades. The following year, the addition of a part-time technician allowed the program to increase to 56 students, kindergarten through tenth grade. The program has also witnessed the first graduates: 13 students completed all the exercises required in their treatment plans. Pre-and post-test results from the Structure of Intellect Learning Abilities Test showed marked improvement for all 13 students. More important, these students’ Stanford Achievement Test reading comprehension subtest scores increased significantly from April 2000 to April 2002. These gains are especially noteworthy because these 13 students had shown almost no growth in reading comprehension prior to the fall of 2000 and their enrollment in the Bridges program. In 2002-2003, the Bridges Lab had two part-time technicians and one full-time teacher, served 80 students, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and continues to grow.

Another Reading Idea

In January 2003, PDSD began an optional element in the Bridges program, a computer supported figurative reading curriculum called LOCAN (Language Objectified for Concept Attainment and Narration). LOCAN was developed for hearing non-readers of all ages. Based on results from the Structure of Intellect Learning Abilities Test, Bridges researchers identified a commonality among one large sub-group of non-readers: they had strong cognition skills in the figural area, with weaker skills in the symbolic and semantic areas. The majority of traditional reading curricula have a semantic basis (Meeker & Meeker, 1999). If students do not have semantic skills, which Meeker and Meeker (1999) found was common for non-readers of all ages, they are less likely to succeed in a traditional program and a cycle of failure begins.

LOCAN was created by Meeker and Meeker as a figural precursor to reading print. As the name implies, LOCAN is a language development program as much as it is a reading program. In LOCAN, figures (glyphs) are presented which represent concepts. The students are taught the concept for each glyph through a series of pictorial and verbal activities. The glyph system is designed to be logical; for example, the root glyph for all female nouns is a triangle. The glyph for girl is a triangle with a circle for a head, the glyph for a woman is the child glyph with lines for legs, the glyph for mother is the woman glyph with a small circle inside the triangle, while the glyph for ‘she’ is simply the triangle alone. LOCAN was also created with the parts of speech in mind; for example, solid lines represent nouns, dotted lines are for verbs, dotted dashed lines are for prepositions. Glyph print provides a conceptual image for each word and allows students to feel like they are reading. As found in the other portions of the Bridges program, figural skills are methodically transformed into the symbolic and semantic skills involved in reading and comprehending printed alphabetic words.

Looking at Older Students This shows the lack of growth that occurred for the older students during their two years prior to the Bridges intervention (1998 to 2000) and the significant growth that occurred with the Bridges intervention (2002).

See this chart in PDF

Prior to beginning LOCAN, the 16 selected third through ninth grade students’ reading and language skills were evaluated to establish a baseline. After only three months, 8 of the 16 students improved their reading vocabulary and reading comprehension scores, based on results from the Brigance Diagnostic Comprehensive Inventory of Basic Skills (Revised) (Brigance, 1999). In addition, all 16 students were able to master the four elements subtest of the Assessment of Children’s Language Comprehension (Foster, Giddan, & Stark, 1973) compared to nine students prior to implementing LOCAN. Due to the short term of this project and small sample group, definitive results are not yet attained. Other schools for deaf students are beginning both the Bridges program and LOCAN. There is hope that data from all of these schools provide insight into the value of Bridges and LOCAN for deaf students nationwide.

[ Top ]

References

Brigance, A. (1999). Brigance diagnostic comprehensive inventory of basic skills (Revised). North Billerica, MA: Curriculum Associates, Inc.

Emmorey, K. (2002). Language, cognition, and the brain: Insights from sign language research. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Foster, R., Giddan, J., & Stark, J. (1973). Assessment of children’s language comprehension. Austin, TX: PRO-ED, Inc.

Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement. (1996). Stanford Achievement Test series (9th ed.). San Antonio, TX: Author.

Lawson, L., & Mykleburst, H. (1970). Ophthalmological deficiencies in deaf children. Exceptional Children, 37, 17- 20.

Marschark, M. (1993). Psychological development of deaf children. New York: Oxford University Press.

Meeker, M., & Meeker, R. (1995). Bridges program. Vida, OR: SOI Systems.

Meeker, M., & Meeker, R. (1999). Bridges training manual and interpretation guide. Vida, OR: SOI Systems.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1989). Curriculum and evaluation standards for school mathematics. VA: The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc.

Spencer, P. E., & Gutfreund, M. K. (1990). In D. F. Moores & K. P. Meadow-Orlans (Eds.), Educational and developmental aspects of deafness (pp. 350-365). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.