Well I couldn’t talk all about reading accommodations without finding a program that could actually do it and do it well. One of the programs recommended by http://www.readingrockets.org is called NaturalReaders. A demo of the product can be seen here http://www.naturalreaders.com/. In spending a bit of time with the program I can see how tremendously beneficial this could be for my students. The program is available as a free download or it can be purchased for around $40 to $100 depending on how fancy you want to get with it. While I didn’t purchase it to see for certain, I believe the $40 version would be sufficient for my students because it reads Web pages and Word documents (among other things). This would be unbelievably helpful when my students are doing research. Right now what happens is this:
Student types their topic into the internet search bar. Student pulls up a list of web pages. Student clicks on the first page that comes up. Student calls me over to the computer to read the page to him or her. All other students throw a party while my back is turned.
Well maybe that last part isn’t entirely true (most of the time).
The fact remains, students would gain a tremendous amount of independence if they did not have to rely on a peer or me to read everything to them. Even kids who are grade level readers can’t necessarily read all the words on a webpage. Having this program available empowers students both at school and at home where parents are not always around to help read aloud either. One thing I’ve discovered is that children with reading disabilities often can comprehend quite well (at least in my experience) so these students will actually get much more out of a lesson that is read to them than a student who tries to read it him or herself and only decodes every third word.
Furthermore, if the program reads word documents then a student could type his or her report and then have the program read it back to them so they can hear their mistakes and more easily make corrections.
I believe I’ve found my first product for classroom implementation!
Feeling a little wiser,
EmTech
3 comments:
What a wonderful program. I have much the same problem in my classroom, in that it is so hard to help one student without the rest of them getting out of control. One reason too that I have often steered away from internet research (and research in general) is that it is too difficult for many of my students to read. If they had someone (other than me) to read it to them, it would help tremendously!
What a wonderful program and reasonably priced to boot. I was all set to download a demo, as I have two 4th grade students who have so much trouble conducting research on the Internet. It looks like it is a Windows only application though, and my school is all Mac. Still, I think I might suggest it to the parents if they have a PC at home to try it out. If you come across any that are Mac compatible throughout your research similar to NaturalReader, I'd love the link.
Wow, this sounds so helpful. I am at a Mac school too so I will have to research for a Mac compatibility. I know our knew laptops have the Windows option, I wonder if that will work. I'll try and let you know. I'm happy for you.
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