Blog #5 - Snap & Read
When I started my teaching career, we had no "disabled" students in our school. There were no "special education classrooms". There were no teachers for these students. All of our disabled or other abled children were in the regular classroom and we somehow made it work! We did what we had to do to meet the needs of these children just as we did with every other child in our classroom. Our "typically abled" children learned and grew as did our "other abled" children learned and grew. We monitored and adjusted and adapted and changed to meet the needs of all the children in our classrooms. It was very much like the scene in the movie, "Apollo 13" where they are given all the different materials and told to make it work to bring the astronauts back to Earth!
As technology advanced and special services laws were made, we as teachers had to learn and grow. So many things became available and every company under the sun wanted teachers to endorse and use their products. Craziness ensued and it was overwhelming, time-consuming and time-wasting to a large degree. However, as I became engrossed with Google and Chromebooks and learning about all they had to offer, I began to whittle down what was out there. Snap & Read was a tool that I came to use and love with all of my students - both typically abled and other abled.
Snap & Read is a tool that reads aloud accessible and inaccessible text. It levels vocabulary so that if a first grader is reading at a third-grade level and is capable of reading the words but doesn't understand the vocabulary, it will lower the level of the words. It will also translate and level content into the correct Lexile for the child to read.
It is a great tool for any classroom teacher or librarian working with many-leveled children. The Snap & Read will also copy material for the child who has a hard time tracking print for copying or has difficulty transcribing because of physical or orthotic limitations.
In her article, "School Librarians of the 21st Century", Dr. Clayton Copeland states, "Perhaps the single most important factor in implementing any form of assistive technology, however, is the idea that technologies should be evaluated and selected so that they can best meet the individual needs of our students." (Copeland, 2011)
I hope to always do the very best that I can to meet the needs of my students in my library. I will always look for bigger and better ways to hear what my children are saying and to meet them where they are! Look into Snap & Read!
I'll have to check out Snap & Read! It sounds similar to Read&Write, but I'm always willing to try different tools to find the most user friendly. I love that these different tools are helpful for so many students- no matter their abilities!
ReplyDeleteI definitely will have to look into Snap and Read. This year, I have a classroom of first graders and a few of them did not attend kindergarten last year. We are really focusing on reading skills and I think a program like this would be great to use. I love how to program can be individualized based on student's needs. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a wonderful resource! I will have to look into it more. Even at the high school level, I have found that even though my students can read the words, they sometimes still struggle with comprehension. I love any technology tool that helps with reading comprehension because the whole goal of teaching is for students to actually internalize information and be able to explain and apply it to their lives. What is the point of teaching students to pronounce the words, if they do not know what the words mean? Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI will definitely have to look into Snap and Read. It sounds like a great resource to use in the classroom. One thing that was mentioned that I like is the programs ability to be individualized based on student need. That's always great.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this tool. I have been looking for a good website reader for some of my students. I have not tried this one out, so I am looking forward to trying it out. Some of my fourth graders are very low readers this year after 1.5 years of eLearning. I want to continue to challenge them and use higher level thinking, and I don't want text to hold them back.
ReplyDeleteOh, this is a very neat resource! Upon further research, I found that it can also translate texts into other languages, which would be GREAT for ESL students and foreign language learners. I also like that it will adapt the text to make it more accessible for students, no matter what their "level" is. Thank you for sharing about this!
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