THE EFFECTS OF PLAYING MP429 VIEWING ON 2ND AND 3RD GRADE

CHILDREN’S INTEREST IN, READING AND USE OF INFORMATIONAL

TEXT, AS WELL AS LEARNING ABOUT SIMPLE MACHINES AND BASIC
COMPUTER SKILLS:
A CLUSTER-RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL
Conducted by
Evaluation Team, Ready To Learn Partnership

Co-Principal Investigators: Michael Cohen, Ph.D., and Martha Hadley, Ph.D.

in collaboration with the University Partners/Scholars Consortium*

This study is funded by the U.S. Department of Education

Office of Innovation & Improvement (OII) as an activity of the Ready To Learn Program.

The Ready To Learn Partnership (RTLP) is a consortium of children’s media creators, early childhood educators,
communications professionals, evaluators and a public television affiliate that was awarded a Ready To Learn Cooperative
Agreement in 2005 by the U.S. Department of Education. Faced with the national crisis that a considerable percentage of
our young children are not learning to read, there are numerous programs addressing early childhood literacy and
remediation. Ready To Learn Grant activities have a specific focus — the optimal utilization of media to engender young
children’s early literacy acquisition. Although this crisis is national in scope, a disproportionate number of non-readers are
from disadvantaged families living in or near poverty. Consequently, Ready To Learn is focused on media and literacy
acquisition for children living in families at the lowest income levels. The WordWorld television series was created to meet
these objectives.

The objectives of this study are:

• Overall, to provide a scientific evaluation of the effect of
playing MP429, an interactive educational media game, on 1st-3rd graders,
with a focus on Title 1 children.
• Specifically, to evaluate the educational effectiveness of the
Mission to Planet 429, in terms of gains in reading for meaning, learning of
new vocabulary and concepts, interest in informational text, and acquisition
of basic 21st century skills.

Overall, this evaluation provides statistically significant evidence indicating

that

SIGNIFICANT MAIN EFFECT AND POSITIVE TRENDS

Children in 2nd – 3rd grade summer programs, assigned

to the Intervention group, who played MP429 daily for
two weeks gained more than children in the Control
condition on several key assessments:
• Significant gains in learning content
specific vocabulary featured in MP429 (p.<.05),
including simple machines concepts and process terms
from the core curriculum (effect size, d = .3),
AND
• Positive trends (pre- to post-intervention)
among children who played MP429 in their interest in
informational or academic reading, basic computer
literacy and 21st century skills as well as their ratings of
the ‘fun’ of the game experience. 1
375 West Broadway, Suite 502, New York, NY 10012 212.431.2252 www.mcgrc.com Contact: Martha Hadley, Ph.D.
mhadley@mcgrc.com
 METHODOLOGY
• 132 children ( 2nd and 3rd grade, mean age
8.1 years) in 19 groups or classes attending 10 summer programs in four
geographic sites (Romoland, CA, Bridgeport, CT, Chicago, IL and New York, NY)
participated in this study.
• Approximately 78% of the sample is
comprised of children living in lower income families (family income of $30,00 or
less).
• Classes were randomly assigned to either an Intervention (played MP429) and
Control group (played Discovery Kids website).
• The intervention lasted for two weeks and all children participated in a pre- and
post-testing prior to and after the intervention. **

EXPERIMENTAL GROUP: VIEWING MP429

• Children in summer program groups,
assigned to the intervention condition, were introduced to MP429 and played
daily for two weeks (for a total of 10 hours of play).
• Teachers or counselors for groups
randomly assigned to the intervention condition completed a log each day,
recording children’s attendance and noted issues that arose as well as
observations of children’s engagement with MP429.

** CONTENTS OF PRE- & POST-TEST ASSESSMENT

• All children were administered pre- and
post-tests consisting of an assessment battery designed to reflect the curriculum
goals of MP429.
• The post-test was administered to both
groups following the two-week intervention.

Pre-Test Post-Test
LAS Links (English fluency)
GRADE GRADE
• Reading comprehension • Reading
comprehension
• Focus on non-fiction passages •
Focus on non-fiction passages
MP429 VOCABULARY 1 AND 2 MP429 VOCABUARY 1 AND 2
ERAS (Elementary Reading Attitude Survey) ERAS (Elementary Reading Attitude
Survey)

Research was funded by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Ready To Learn program, award number
U295A050004. The contents of this report were developed under a cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department
of Education. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and
you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

2
375 West Broadway, Suite 502, New York, NY 10012 212.431.2252 www.mcgrc.com Contact: Martha Hadley, Ph.D.
mhadley@mcgrc.com