Assisting the Reluctant and Remedial Reader with Electronic Texts (eBooks) Terry Cavanaugh

Understanding Student Readers Strategic readers are able to use strategies, such as prediction, drawing inferences, recognizing cause and effect relationships, summarizing, questioning, and rereading. Reluctant readers usually are able to read any material that is interesting to them. Reluctant readers are frustrated by text they find difficult and do not understand how to effectively apply reading strategies to ease their burden. Remedial readers typically reading several grade levels below their peers. They have a limited vocabulary and few internalized strategic reading skills. Often, remedial readers have stalled at or below a fourth-grade reading level and need help reading and understanding information from high school texts. Adapted from Glencoe Online’s Teaching Today

Finding Appropriate Reading Material Readability Variety Interest

Readability Tools Web Based Will also create CBA reading probes

Readability Tools MS Word

Simplified versions Word: Autosummarize Abridged

Variety Short stories Stories by Children Graphic Novels Comics

Techniques for Helping Struggling Readers Offer a Wide Range of Reading Materials Incorporate Large-Print Materials Engage Multiple Modalities Teach Important Vocabulary Use Pre and Active Reading Techniques

Wide Range of Reading Materials One of the ways that electronic books can assist with for the reluctant and remedial readers is an expansion of the classroom and school library to include more books than are currently there. In most schools eBook files and programs will run on the currently available school computers. EBooks are available from free online libraries and more books available for purchase from electronic book stores. Literally tens of thousands of free eBooks available through the web student can drastically increase the chances of a finding something of interest to them to read.

Non-fiction

Modern Science Fiction

Modern Romance

Picture Books

Early Readers

More options

Large Print Materials One issue of reading is the legibility of the material being read by the student. Students who struggle with reading, regardless of the reason, can benefit from changing to larger font sizes, i.e., 14 or 16 point as a reading scaffold. Standard publishing font size. 11-pt Times New Roman Large Print font size. 16-pt Verdana Reading miscues, including misreading syllables or words; skipping syllables, words, or lines; rereading lines; and ignoring punctuation cues were found to be virtually eliminated when students read large print

Large Print

More Large Print Currently many teachers and librarians already use large print materials for their students who have: Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) Difficulty with encoding or decoding Dyslexia Large or small motor deficits Amblyopia or "Lazy Eye" Light sensitivity Short term memory deficits Tracking issues Visual impairments (galeschools.com 2004, Reluctant Reader Center)

Digital Big Books Using a computer showing an eBook, a video projector and a screen, teachers can create their own digital big books.

Engage Multiple Modalities Involving multiple or varying modalities of learning, such as listening, can improve reading. Often an observation of a reluctant or remedial reader shows a student who is troubled when reading a passage, but often the student can also display good comprehension from listening to the same passage. It is important to present text information in more modalities than just print, such as presenting the material orally to the student.

Text-to-Speech Audible output with synchronized highlighting

FLASH eBooks

Video eBooks Computer video DVD Captions

Audio eBooks MP3

Audio Books read along with unabridged version

Digital Story Books read and listen on a device CD storybooks LeapPad

Vocabulary Interactive dictionaries Search for terms in context

Reading Strategies Pre-Reading Cover/Title Concept Anticipation & Prediction Structure of text Word/vocabulary Search Executive Summary Active/Guided Reading Selective Highlighting Power Highlighting Margin/Sticky Notes Single Sentence Summary Bookmark/Flag Buddy Reading Crystal Ball QAR Literary Elements

Field Dependent [field sensitive] – Full Screen

Visual Support