Wonder.io

Wonder.io reengages struggling readers by providing a library of over 100 interactive, gamified books that children can access from their smart phones. 

Families can access these books for free at www.wonder.io

Each book is an interactive experience:

1.   Children are asked questions about every 90 seconds, allowing them to participate and cognitively engage in the study.

2.   Stories are written with interactive questions baked in. Readers solve mysteries and help the protagonists through these questions.

3.   Children are given consistent positive feedback as they work through solving the mysteries.

4.   Questions are tied to social competition, like Kahoot, adding importance to focusing and comprehending.

While a large diversity of children have enjoyed Wonder.io (over 5,000 families), Wonder.io works especially for reluctant readers with Dyslexia or ADHD. We have been co-creating Wonder.io for over 10 years with reluctant readers at Denver Public Schools and the Boys & Girls Club. A majority of the kids we work with are African American or Hispanic and are 1-2 grade levels below in reading.

Wonder.io is written a 2nd grade reading level so children in 2nd -5th grade can participate independently. Parents have enjoyed reading with their children for early grade levels, as they get to answer questions together.

Wonder.io is offered for free as many of the families and schools we work with do not have the budget to purchase books or staffing resources for the much needed one on one reading.

In our year long pilot studies, Wonder.io was able to successfully engage these struggling readers. At the beginning of the year, student’s had a strong negative stance to reading, as one reader put on the first day, “Reading sucks.” Children, on average, read for less than 5 minutes when assigned a reading task.

After a month of Wonder.io, children’s reading motivation drastically changed. Children would ask to read another book, even after a full hour of wonder.io. On multiple occasions children told their family they had to wait in the car to be picked up. Comprehension scores jumped from 20% to 100%.

Wonder.io was a grass roots imitative started at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Denver (The clubs we worked at had 90% Black and Hispanic students and most children were 1-2 grade levels below in reading).

The solution we show today was built from 10 years of cocreation, prototyping, and iteration alongside the children and staff at the Boys & Girls Club. Our first prototypes failed spectacularly. Children refused to watch our videos, care about our rewards, or pay attention to any of our text. But we asked them, what would work, what do you want? Over 20 iterations later, Wonder.io is working in these clubs because it was specifically designed by and for the students. 

While library books did not motivate our students, wonder.io worked.

Two of our three founders are first generation college students, and amongst us, we are African American, Native American, and Hispanic.

We are in the middle of a literacy crisis. About one third of early Elementary children are missing their reading benchmarks. Up to 60% of students in urban, low-income schools are at high risk for reading problems. Without intervention, these struggling readers will be at a 1st or 2nd grade reading level in high school.

While this literacy crisis is multi-faceted, one major contributing factor is children’s lack of motivation. Children’s motivation to read is a stronger predictor of success than gender, income, or parental education. In a world of iPads, video games, and Youtube, more and more children fail to engage with school books and opt out of their learning.

Our theory of change is

1. Interactive books that require participation and critical thinking increase struggling readers motivation.

2. Increased motivation improves children's length of reading, comprehension level, and focus during reading.

3. These improved reading traits lead to stronger growth in reading skills and corresponding reading test scores.

We have clear Level 2 evidence. We've conducted a 6 month study with 5 struggling readers which showed comprehension, focus, and reading time all substantially increasing with Wonder.io. Comprehension scores on a typical grade level book were 20% and with Wonder.io comprehension scores went up to 80%. Typical books were often not finished where our kids read for over an hour, asking to read more later.

However, this pilot study lacked a few pieces to bring it to the next level. 

1. We had a low sample size (there were only so many kids in the afterschool club who were able to read but still struggling). 

2. We did not include a control for comparison (too small of a sample size).

3. Our implementation was done by the researcher rather than teachers. In many ways the research was more exploratory than validating. It's our hope next time our research will be implemented in a classroom now that we have clear positive trends to share.

All of our research has been done by Dr. Elliott Hedman directly which is time intensive with low sample sizes. It's our hope next school year to have 3 or 4 different teachers working in afterschool clubs 4 times a week. Hopefully then we can create a more standardized approach to collecting this data. We could use help in thinking through what are key indicators that our theory of change is working and how to set up a control where most kids in after school programs are receiving no reading interventions at all.

Digital books allow readers to participate through adaptive, interactive questions and social competition

How large of an impact does boosting motivation and critical thinking in reading affect short term outcomes (e.g. comprehension, time spent reading) and long term outcomes (e.g. reading scores)?

In terms of deliverables, as a base, we would like a concrete research plan that we can implement with Denver Public Schools After School programs.

With more time and energy, we would like to expand that to help with implementation - let's build out our research site together. What schools should we test? What questions should be answered during each session?

With maximum energy, I'd like to encourage the fellows to run the research themselves. We could run a pilot/control within a school system the fellows are connected with. I could train fellows or connected teachers in Wonder.io implementation and the fellows could run and evaluate the product at their own site.