Get ready for some fantastic news from Texthelp—your go-to for making learning accessible and joyful for every student.

Over the last decade, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with Texthelp on numerous occasions.

Time and again, they’ve proven themselves as a steadfast ally in our shared mission to make education accessible for all students. I deeply respect their dedication to developing practical, free resources for educators.

They’ve whipped up three incredible guides packed with expert tips to spice up your teaching.

From easy-peasy captioning tricks to making lessons visually vibrant and beyond, these resources are game-changers.

Whether you’re looking to enhance reading skills or make content more engaging for every learner, these guides have got you covered.

Dive in and watch your classroom transform into a place where learning knows no bounds.

This blog post is sponsored by Texthelp.

3 Essential Guides for Teachers: Adapting Instruction to Every Student Ability

by Mary Pembleton from Texthelp

As an accessible technology company, Texthelp is always looking for ways to support educators with the diverse learning needs in their classrooms.

To help, our content team recently asked five experts to share their best tips: a researcher, two teachers turned education journalists, an accessibility consultant, and one AT specialist.

Get the Guides!

They gave us excellent advice, and from it, we created three downloadable guides:

• A guide about inclusive reading instruction
• A guide to supporting English Language learners in general education classrooms
• A guide to essential accessibility practices in schools and classrooms.

…with more on the way.

These guides include advice for administrators and MTSS teams, loads of research studies, and lots of quick tips for educators who need simple ways to adapt grade-level instruction to the different levels of abilities, backgrounds, and needs in their classrooms.

Below are six of their best tips. To gain more, head over to the Texthelp website to get the complete guides delivered to your inbox.

1. Turn on captions when teaching as another way for students to take in information.

It’s easy, free, and super-supported by research. 

Turn on live captioning in Google Slides as a visual aid in the classroom, even if you aren’t using a slide deck to teach.

Who it benefits, and how:

• Learners who are deaf/hard of hearing by allowing them access to the content in an alternative way
• English Language Learners by helping with pronunciation, language acquisition, and comprehension
• Learners who are learning to read by increasing exposure to print and building literacy skills
• All learners by improving comprehension, attention, and memory of the video content

How to do it:

• To display the captions in a captioned video, simply click the “CC” button.
• To add live captions to any lesson you teach verbally, you can enable live captions with one quick adjustment in Google Slides.

Here’s how to set up live captions in a Google slide presentation: 

1. Ensure your computer’s microphone is on
2. Click or enable “Present” in Google Slides
3. At the bottom left of your screen, select “More options.”
4. Click “Captions Preferences”
5. Toggle captions on.

Now, when you speak, live captions will appear on your screen or smartboard.

For more information about live captioning options in Google Slides, visit the “Present slides with captions” section of the Google Help Center here.

2. Teach with a microphone. 

Remote Microphone Systems were created for people who have difficulties hearing, and are often used as an assistive technology in the classroom.

Casual microphone use by a classroom educator should never replace necessary assistive technology support. However, the voice amplification offered by any microphone could be a helpful tool for engaging students who have trouble with listening, students with autism, and lend a hand with classroom management.

Pair sound amplification with free live captioning in Google Slides, listed above, for added benefit. 

3. Have students record themselves reading, and listen back to it.

To help learners of all abilities with their reading skills, ask them to record themselves reading a text out loud and then listen back to it. This helps struggling readers, beginning readers, and ELLs improve their reading fluency. 

4. Use visuals to supplement instruction automatically. 

Including visuals in your instruction is a great way to build understanding in all learners, particularly EL Learners and learners with autism, who benefit from the easily understandable additional context of visuals.

To empower learners with one-click visuals while reading, try Read&Write’s visual dictionary tool. Learners can click on an unfamiliar word in a text, and the visual dictionary feature will give them a picture to help them understand it.

Related: How to Create a Dynamic Reading Experience

5. Give everyone the same required readings, and show students how to adjust the reading level.

Rewordify is a free tool that allows learners to automatically adjust the reading level in any text to adapt any digital content to their ability.

Read&Write also offers a Rewordify feature, which allows students to adjust their reading levels wherever they are reading. 

6. Play an audiobook while having students read along from a physical text.

Complex texts and grade-level content benefit all learners, but are also not accessible to everyone. One way to normalize accommodations and make content accessible to everyone in class is to play an audiobook while students read along with a physical text.

Another benefit is that bimodal presentation, or providing both audio and written forms simultaneously boosts processing speed and information recall.

For additional ways to make learning more accessible to everyone in class, visit the Texthelp website’s Tier 1 is for Everyone page.

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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As a former reading teacher, I know how difficult it can be to support struggling readers, English Language Learners, and to improve the fluency of all of my students.

I wish I’d had Fluency Tutor to help!

I don’t endorse a lot of products, but Texthelp produces some of the best accessibility tools and they work seamlessly with my favorite Google tools.

You can get access to Fluency Tutor for FREE, and it’s perfect for remote learning.

Below is some information to get you started.

FREE access to Fluency Tutor for Google Chrome 

The folks over at Texthelp have created some amazing accessibility tools to support all students, including digital tools to support literacy, struggling readers, and ELL. Oh, and since Texthelp is a Google for Education partner, their tools work seamlessly with your Google login, and integrate with Google Drive and Google Classroom.

One of my favorite Texthelp tools is Fluency Tutor for Google. And, Texthelp has recently dropped some MAJOR news for this product. Texthelp is currently providing FREE access for students, teachers, and parents to Fluency Tutor for Google Chrome through the end of the school year! 

What is Fluency Tutor?

“Fluency Tutor for Google is a Chrome app designed to help students improve reading fluency while saving busy teachers valuable time. And because it’s web-based it’s great for remote learning. 

Fluency Tutor helps students of all ages and ability levels become more avid, engaged, and confident readers. What’s more, it gives teachers a clear picture of every child’s reading attainment and progress over time.

This easy-to-use app lets students record themselves reading aloud on their laptop, Chromebook, or tablet, from the comfort of their own home, and then send it to their teacher for feedback.”

Fluency Tutor is great for emerging readers in grades K – 4 and struggling readers or English language learners in older grades.

Introduction to Fluency Tutor

Student View

Benefits

• Makes reading aloud fun and satisfying for readers of all ages, abilities and grade levels
• Saves time for busy teachers, allowing them to focus on other classroom tasks
• Encourages students to practice reading aloud at their own pace without direct supervision in a relaxed environment, at school or at home
• Simple, friendly and seamless: one easy-to-use app for teachers and students
• Allows reluctant students to freely choose their own reading content
• Frees teachers to listen to each student’s reading progress wherever and whenever it suits them best
• Give students extra help with text-to-speech, dictionary, picture dictionary and translate tool
• Great for early readers, and individuals learning English as a second language (ESL)
• Integrates seamlessly with G Suite for Education, Google Drive, and Classroom
• Plays nicely on any device: Chrome browser app for PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks

Features

• Friendly dashboard interface for teachers and students
• Teachers can pick from the pre-selected library of over 500 leveled reading passages, based on content, Lexile level or reading age
• Teachers can also create reading passages from existing curriculum materials or online sources
• Students can pick their own reading passages that interest them – great for reluctant readers
• Share passages with individual students, or with the entire class using Google Classroom ‘share’ button
• Passages appear in student’s Google Drive
• Students can record their own assigned reading passages whenever and wherever it suits them
• Extra help with text-to-speech, dictionary, picture dictionary, and translate tools
• Quick Score gives immediate feedback to students without the need for a full assessment

How Much?

• Texthelp is currently providing FREE access for students, teachers, and parents to Fluency Tutor for Google Chrome 

How to Get Fluency Tutor for Google 

• Install the Fluency Tutor for Google Chrome App in the Google Chrome browser.
• Sign-in to Fluency Tutor with your Google account.
• Get Started! Here’s the Fluency Tutor for Google YouTube playlist to help you learn the basics. 
  

Check out these related posts:

• How to Create a Dynamic Reading Experience
• How to Check Spelling and Grammar in Google Docs
• How to Easily Assess Writing in Google Docs
• 9 Ways to Improve Student Writing with Google Docs

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

The post FREE Access to Fluency Tutor to Support Student Literacy Remotely appeared first on Shake Up Learning.

Using Google Chrome Extensions to Support Struggling Readers and English Language Learners

Google Chrome has so much to offer teachers and students, AND there are so many fantastic apps and extensions to support struggling readers. Text-to-speech is a great way to support struggling readers–it’s reading with your ears!

Benefits of Text-to-Speech for Readers

• Relieves the burden of decoding
• Focus on comprehension
• Improve fluency and endurance
• Identify and correct more errors

There are several text-to-speech apps and extensions. Below are three that I find useful for the classroom.

 

© Shake Up Learning 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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