Free Reading Resources for Teens [Premium]

Free Reading Resources for Teens [Premium]

It can be difficult to find free reading resources for middle and high school readers, but the non-profit SERP (Strategic Education Research Partnership) has a free engaging downloadable curriculum. The printed materials can also be purchased for classrooms.   They launched STARI curriculum for Tier II to address “gaps in fluency, decoding, stamina, and comprehension.” It is definitely not sufficient to be used as a primary curriculum for dyslexic students, but each lesson module includes 3 levels of fluency passages and each lesson includes multimodal resources like pictures and audio interviews in addition to text. Check out all of the STARI resources HERE. Here are examples from a unit on disasters:   One interesting part of this curriculum is the scaffolding of debate. For instance: […]

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More Free Leveled Texts and Reading Passages [Premium]

More Free Leveled Texts and Reading Passages [Premium]

The grand-daddy of them all is still probably Readworks, but if you like to change things up with leveled reading, check out News in Levels (alas Newsela is no longer free) or Tween Tribune, run by the Smithsonian.   If you do use Readworks, make sure you know about the slider at the bottom of the left sidebar that can help students select the correct reading level. One nice thing about News in Levels is that each new item includes either an audio track or video. If your students are assigned to conduct research on the internet, but may struggle with reading text they find due to their reading level, have them install Rewordify to reword difficult words or phrases or activate their browsers text-to […]

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Answer Apps and the Benefits of Learning in Reverse [Premium]

Answer Apps and the Benefits of Learning in Reverse [Premium]

Conventional lecture courses for subjects with problem sets can be inefficient.   For dyslexic students if the information comes in too quickly, they can’t follow steps as a teacher works through problems in real time. A recurring scenario for many students (and not just the dyslexic ones) is that to truly understand, the students must work through the material themselves at home. The lucky ones have a parent, sibling, or someone else to be a tutor, while others may struggle looking at incomplete notes with only a hazy idea of what teachers did to arrive at their answers. Having teachers notes or having a flipped classroom (watch a video first, then see the problems worked by a teacher) can improve this situation, but inevitably there […]

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Music And Dyslexia:  Chat with Sally Daunt, Chair of the Music Committee of the BDA [Premium]

Music And Dyslexia: Chat with Sally Daunt, Chair of the Music Committee of the BDA [Premium]

Recently, I had a wonderful opportunity to chat with Sally Daunt, Chairwoman of the Music Committee of the British Dyslexia Association. We had been corresponding about dyslexia and choral groups and Sally had asked about how dyslexic strengths can manifest themselves in choral groups where singers had to fit into tightly controlled schedules of music, extensive sight reading, and music performances which could have limited opportunities for musical interpretation. From my discussion with Sally: “Many dyslexic musicians have difficulty with sight reading – and perhaps cathedral choirs might consider whether an absolute requirement is necessary in the audition process. Some who have difficulty with sight reading might be able to pick music up quite quickly having heard a version once. In theater companies, some accommodations […]

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Apps for Productivity and Organization [Premium]

Apps for Productivity and Organization [Premium]

How about apps for productivity and organization? Here are useful ones you can try.       ToDoist is a popular to do list that is integrated with email, IFTTT, Dropbox, and Slack. It is free – premium and available on iOS and Android.   For some people, free Google Calendar is sufficient. Just remember to set up your calendar notifications and Google Tasks (iOS and Android).   Just Press Record $4.99 iOS I use this app all the time to record – just a big red button and store audio recordings to the cloud. With a recent update, this app has also added free transcriptions. It’s not perfect (probably Otter.ai is more accurate, but it’s great to be free and definitely helps searching through […]

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Best Writing Apps [Premium]

Best Writing Apps [Premium]

We’ve talked a bit about speech to text for writing, but over time, many dyslexic students may prefer to write by typing or by hand. Technology can help dyslexic writers in many different ways, depending on their needs.     For young children with little or no eideitic (snapshot picture) memory for letters may benefit by an alphabet strip pasted inconspicuously in a folder or perhaps on a bulletin board. Students who are able to write by hand, but write very little because they’re uncertain of how to spell words, benefit tremendously by apps like Easy Spelling Aid which will find the spelling of words by speaking into the microphone. It also translate words. Check out these apps! Click on photos to access their sites. […]

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Best Apps for Subject Knowledge [Premium]

Best Apps for Subject Knowledge [Premium]

Because of the work of reading dense text and the fact that skimming can be difficult (if not impossible) for students, reading and re-reading alone are often not the most efficient ways for students to study for exams or file information into their long-term memories.         FLASHCARD APPS Many students know that flashcard apps work because they allow you to review key information without wading through a sea of text. The best apps allow you to review only the cards that you’re unsure of, and apps either come with common textbooks pre-loaded or allow you to upload PowerPoints, PDFs, word documents with information with a conversion into cards. You don’t have to write your own cards! Some students may even find that […]

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Multisensory Learning – Listen, Watch, and Do [Premium]

Multisensory Learning – Listen, Watch, and Do [Premium]

Multisensory learning is often considered the gold standard for dyslexic students. Technology can help by converting text to speech, adding pictures, or adding some action to what otherwise might be a passive task.       READING When it comes to reading, early readers need to reliably hear sounds and associate them with letters, letter groups, and words. The easiest to understand are professional readers of audiobooks who read with liveliness and drama. Older students and adults may be able to transition to electronic voices, especially if they can be sped up.   PHONICS AND STRUCTURED LITERACY Blending Board, iOS FREE (below) creates free customizable deck of phonemes. Also includes multisyllabic words. PHONICS GENIUS (below) is 99 cents on iOS and has over 6000 words […]

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Essential Tech: Favorites for Work/Life [Premium]

Essential Tech: Favorites for Work/Life [Premium]

Every year technology gets better and better and it’s clear that finally it’s catching up with dyslexic minds.   Major technology companies have finally responded to calls to optimize their text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and spell and grammar checkers to the dyslexic community. If you tried and then gave up on technology in the past, now is the time to check again.     VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS Phones, tablets, laptops, and smart watches all have virtual assistants.   Siri will send and read texts, set alarms and timers, make calls / start facetime, set reminders and check calendar, do translations and conversion, solve math equations, navigate on apple maps, search and create notes, play voicemails, check the weather, find files on the Mac, check stocks, even fill out […]

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Algebra: What Students See and What Mathematicians See [Premium]

Algebra: What Students See and What Mathematicians See [Premium]

  Ben Orlin is the author of Math with Bad Drawings and Change is the only Constant: The Wisdom of Calculus in a Madcap World.       Besides have a good sense of humor, Ben is good at recognizing the differences in the way students and mathematicians see math problems. Take for example, the math problem, What is 7 x 11 x 13. What goes through your mind when you see a problem like that? I reach for my calculator, or might try 7 x 11 first, then look for a pen a paper, but what Ben suggests is that mathematicians imagine this.   The following examples Ben shared about Algebra had me laughing aloud:   The mathematician’s simplification involves recognizing a pattern. But […]

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How Not To Give Up On Learning A Second Language [Premium]

How Not To Give Up On Learning A Second Language [Premium]

Learning second languages are difficult for many dyslexic students; foreign language waivers or substitutions are common, but in spite of this, many can learn other languages and even multiple languages if the goal is conversation. Writing and spelling second and third language can be more difficult, but also possible for many people. Students may be more successful if they able to study over a longer time and if they have learned more about the structure of language in their native tongue. In the video below, listen to 4 Hour Work Week guru Tim Ferriss (yes, he’s dyslexic) talk about how he learned to be able to converse in many foreign languages.     The type of learning described, won’t necessarily make you a master of […]

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