This week I read an article title "Teacher-Created Electronic Books: Integrating Technology to Support Readers With Disabilities" by Rhodes and Milby from the journal The Reading Teacher. In this article they discuss using electronic books as an assistive technology for students with special needs (because this meets with the IDEA guidelines). With this approach they focus on the importance of retelling and rereading to improve on fluency and comprehension. They suggest this series of events to use e-books (a traditional sotrybook with multi-media effects) in your classroom:
1) Read book to student(s)
2) Students retell book while teacher records natural language
3) Teacher creates a slideshow with text on each page
4) Teacher inserts clipart/pictures or, a better option, student produced digital photography on each page
5) (optional) Create animaltion effects to move from one slide to the next
6) Record narration for the slide show (teacher can record or students can)
7) Teacher intros book to class
8) Students watch/listen to story during literacy centers or free time.
The authors feel that e-books in this regard are much more effective at helping all students as opposed to the traditional book on tape method. Not only are the students more engaged and committed to the book, but the visual aspect is particularly useful for students with disabilities. It's important to note that many e-books are available for purchase, however "teachers, with minimal effort, produce books that are directly related to curriculum using simple slideshow software programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint, which is available to most classroom computers"(Rhodes & Milby, 2007).
Rhodes, J.A., & Milby, T.M. (2007). Teacher-Created Electronic Books: Integrating Technology to Support Readers With Disabilities. The Reading Teacher, 61, 255-259.
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ReplyDeleteI was wondering which grade level this electronic book is for. I thought that it would be a great tool for literacy learning activity type in lower elementary level. But, since their necessity is still there with them to be able to read and comprehend printed text for content area learning in higher grade level, repeated practice and connections of reading skills and strategies to different modes of content knowledge representation would be regarded crucial.
ReplyDeleteI think that this would be a great tool to use in Elementary and can even go into Junior High. I know that I couldn't use a picture book for Junior High students but they would be able to work in groups and maybe summarize the current novel we read as a class and draw visualizations of a certain part of the book. This is a great way to personalize a text without having to spend money to do so!
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