We should be allowing Students to Read with their Ears

ireadwrite for iPad

I have written a lengthy blog for @InnovateMySchl here:
http://bit.ly/1rG8zMV

I discuss what schools are doing for those students who cannot access the curriculum due to a reading difficulty.

My question is ‘do you leave them to struggle until they can read fluently?’

For whatever reason, there are many students who cannot access the curriculum due to poor reading skills and Text-to-Speech can alleviate this problem to some extent.

I link this to:

Stanovich’s Matthews Effect

Click to access Stanovich__1986_.pdf

Rich get richer and poor get poorer in terms of reading achievement.

Text-to-speech for the right learner with poor decoding skills can help them access the curriculum independently and this ability, particularly as a student gets older, promotes self-sufficiency rather than the learned helplessness which is often the case.

Early intervention is key to improving reading but there are some (either due to severity or lack of support) for whom reading will not be fluent or automatic at the time they require it to be. We cannot wait – as their peers become richer they are getting poorer.

Allow them text to speech to access curriculum – give them electronic copies of your text books – email your worksheets – remove the barrier of decoding difficulty and level the playing field for them.

Text-to-Speech is like spectacles for a poor reader.

See link for free and paid Text-to-Speech software.