Struggling Readers and Web 2.0

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Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on November 8, 2009 at 11:06am

Don't know if I'd call it web 2.0 since I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I have some materials you can use with your students. My Own Books are personalized books about everyday things, some fairy tales, lots of history stories, in which you insert the child's name. The stories can then be read with the child as the main character or hero, either online, or printed into booklets. Here's the link: http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/books

What I hear from users is that comprehension and interest are both maximized with these books. They were originally designed for my autistic nephew several years ago. He became a reader.

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Permalink Reply by Larry Kearns on November 8, 2009 at 11:25am

Thanks Anne, this is truly amazing. I'm sure this will be very helpful to my group.

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Permalink Reply by Liz Pearce on November 8, 2009 at 11:30am

Hi Larry,
What age/grade group are you teaching?
StoryLine Online has children's books read aloud by Screen Actors Guild actors such as James Earl Jones.
Book Adventure has a neat book finder to help students K-8 find a book at their level and in a subject that interests them.
Stories from the Web is a great site for 11-14 year olds
Readers Theater is a great way to get them reading and active. These scripts are geared towards K-3 but if your students are older you can always present to a younger class. This way the students won't be turned off.
Scholastic has student written book reviews on their site. You can read ones already submitted or have students submit their own.
Inkless Tales is a reading and writing site great for elementary kids.
Educational Synthesis has free personalized books you can print.
Into The Book is a reading comprehension site for K-4 readers.
Guys Read is great for males who don't like to read.
Reading Rockets is good for younger struggling readers.
I hope at least one of these is helpful.

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Permalink Reply by Pamela Jackson on November 8, 2009 at 11:58am

Larry,

What grade level and age group are your students. What are their interests? "You got to love the story;" engage the reader. As readers they need to write also. Authentic stories can be created and read by their peers; Web2.0 tools can be used to express themes, opinions, and create book reviews (book trailers); some tools like Glogster, Scratch, Xtranormal, Gcast (podcast). Listening to audiobooks on iPods along. Also, use a phonics products like Fundations to jumpstart your students, just 15 minutes a day; and Univ of Kansas' Learning Strategies - Writing, one of the best and cheapest writing programs I've seen for special ed and mainstream with an extremely high success rate. http://www.ku-crl.org/materials/

You can create a wiki for guided reading groups and use Kidsread.com as content http://www.kidsreads.com/. Create a literature circle then Skype with an author. http://skypeanauthor.wetpaint.com/

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth on November 10, 2009 at 12:42pm

Have you considered text to speech options to assist these students in accessing their general curriculum which may motivate them to see the power of the written word? Would any of your students qualify for this www.bookshare.org?

Also in the realm of text to speech, have you looking in assistive technology tools in the category of scan to read?
some well known softwares are: Kurzweil 3000, WYNN, Read and Write Gold, Solo Literacy Suite.


Here is just one research study on the results on text to speech for reading: http://telem-pub.openu.ac.il/users/chais/2009/noon/2_2.pdf

It may be beneficial to google for some more.

Resources for additional information:


http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/02/primer-text-to-speech.html
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/03/csun-2008listening-to-thems...
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/03/csun-2009-text-to-speech-fr...

Free Text to Speech
http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/Home/
http://www.naturalreaders.com/
http://fullmeasure.co.uk/powertalk/
http://www.yakitome.com/
http://www.odiogo.com/

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Permalink Reply by Tracy Lee on November 11, 2009 at 7:14am

Here are a few. I'm a fan of anything interactive that allows students to create:

http://www.lulu.com/

http://www.tikatok.com/

Text to speech: http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en

http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/

http://www.zimmertwins.com/

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Permalink Reply by Kerry A. Kelley on November 12, 2009 at 8:32am

Have you read What Really Matters for Struggling Readers by Richard Allington? It may be a great partner to the interactive sights you are researching! Good luck.

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