More Compensatory Reading Apps and Taking the Pencil out the Process and other Intervention Strategies for Writing

We began today's class with a discussion of more compensatory reading strategies and apps that are available to support students with the reading process.  These are up to date apps that educators would generally start applying in Grade 3 or 4, due to the big jump from learning to read, to reading to learn.  Each time I see any of these amazing apps that can help students with reading material, I think of the possibilities available for students in subjects like Science, Social Studies and Health.  Using compensatory strategies is important across all subjects; however, oftentimes students are able to easily find reading material to practice with (in conjunction with remediation strategies) at their reading level.  I have struggled the most as a classroom teacher to find ways to help students who struggle to access literacy in subjects like Science, where they need to follow directions to complete experiments.  I think that the following apps would be so helpful in allowing all students access to curriculum across subjects.

Compensatory Reading Strategies:

One of the first compensatory strategies we looked at was ReadIris.  This app allows you to take a photo of the material that needs to be read, make a text box around the material and then open with another app such as ClaroPDF.  ClaroPDF reads the selected document aloud, tracing with a yellow highlighted area.  One of the reasons that I liked ReadIris was because it was extremely easy to use (trust me, I tried it!), and it was affordable.  It currently is priced at $10.99, which when compared with a similar app Prizmo, which comes in at upwards of $30, is extremely affordable.  ClaroPDF is a new PDF reader and it is more up to date than some of the others mentioned in Friday’s webinar.  There are soooooo many options for these apps, including having an assessment read aloud, using for text book pages, as well as Science experiments.  Another thing that makes ReadIris so appealing is that sharing of the information is extremely easy.  For example, you can Airdrop, email, or send as a message between i-user accounts. You also have the capability to tap on unknown words and get the definition of unknown words.  I can see this as being extremely helpful and beneficial for many students.

There are so many amazing things you can do with i-technologies, just in the accessibility area!  Although I was aware that you could change the rate of speech in your settings, I was not aware that as humans we process speech information at a rate of 150 wpm.  For students struggling with auditory processing and working memory I think that it would be extremely important to slow the speech function down significantly!  I was happy to see you could slow it down to 90 wmp if you needed to as well.  Another aspect mentioned it today’s class, was another that I wrote about after the webinar, which was the option of Guided Access.  If you don’t know what this means… check out my previous post, and hook it up on your i-device!  I loved that it was also possible to block the back function so that students can’t go back or change their level (using guided access) as well as zoom with 3 fingers, use larger and bold text.  You can also choose the closed captioning in settings and any YouTube videos will be closed captioned. 

I was also very excited to be introduced to the app Scribd, which offers many free online books (for both myself and my classroom!).  One important thing to mention is that highlighting words is extremely beneficial for students with Learning Disabilities and ADHS, and luckily many compensatory apps offer this function.

Another extremely interesting app was NaviDys, which is a web-browser for students with visual impairments and learning disabilities.  In the top right hand corner you see a small aA, which stands for the font selection.  There is a font available called Dyslexie, which is more accessible for students with dyslexia, which leads to more fluent readers.  In the same place (font selection) you can also change font size, letter and word spacing and line spacing.   

A few other cool apps that were mentioned today were BoneScan Bob, MathTerms (which uses cognitive credit cards) and Voicedream, which is mostly for kids with visual impairments.  Check out a few videos below to have some insight on some of these apps. 

One of the last things that we looked at today were the advantages to using engaging Text books and the opportunities for digital textbooks in your classroom.  There are some really awesome text books already available online, as well as textbooks that are topic based that would be so engaging for all students.  I hope to find and utilize some in the future through the universal design for learning.  And, as if an engaging textbook doesn’t already sound amazing, you can also highlight and note-take, as well as make study cards from your own highlights in the app!  Some engaging textbooks also have glossary terms that are also in study cards and you can export highlights and email them to yourself for use at home!
Here is an example of a children's book found on YouTube which I found engaging.