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As I currently work with a number of children with dyslexia I will focus on a group of children with dyslexia. It affects literacy all round and spans across all subjects. It is vital to enable the children to focus on the task, rather than trying to read/spell the actual word. Especially in non literacy subjects.
Topmarks is a website which I loved using with them as they are focused on the numeracy at hand and it has the feature of read aloud function helping them to actually work on the task at hand.
Speech to text is useful. When the children are writing, they can speak to the laptop once there is a mic available and it will type up what they are saying. Here the group can focus on the story helping them to dive into their creativity.
Nessy learning has been very useful this year I would admit. It is a website which is very interactive and takes a multisensory approach through, videos, games and activi5ties aimed at helping children with dyslexia. It will ultimately help them to write, spell and work on their typing skills. The children love it and enjoy the progress they make in it.
The SETT model helps us as teachers to select the most appropriate tools to use when teaching the children. It gets us to consider the student, their needs, challenges, the environment they are in and the actual task at hand. Once we have considered all of this the framework encourages us to actually see how we can enable the child to maximise their learning experience through the different tools available. By having these assistive technology tools available, it helps the child to engage in the actual task at hand. If we work together as teachers and everyone who is involved with the child learning, be it other teachers, parents, snas or anybody involved with the child’s learning, we can make the educated decision on how to help them to the best of our ability.
SETT.odt
I have been working with 1st class in SET so I have picked a numeracy word problem activity. I have found that there were lots of words I had to read aloud for them as we had to focus on decoding with them this year. The feature of immersive reading allows them to complete the word problem without having me to read the problem. Here they are focused on the objective of numeracy rather than literacy, empowering them to read. It is so useful for them to have this feature with Microsoft.
Are teachers’ lifelong learners? Why is CPD so important?
In my opinion, everyone should be a lifelong learner. It is not just teacher but society. If we are never open to change and to learn new things, we will remain stagnant in our lives. Therefore teachers must be lifelong learners. Yes there are things that work well, and if they work, continue to use them, but it is vital to continue with CPD, trial the new things you learn and if it benefits the child, continue to use it. I think technology in itself will always be improving and it is crucial to continue to improve as teachers and to pass this trait onto the learners.I have heard of immersive reading before but never actually took the time to look into it. Cannot believe I didn’t look into it before. It is so useful I have to admit and it is actually an underrated tool to assist the children’s learning. It is so useful, that you really can use it anywhere too. This feature of allowing children to hear the words being read to them is invaluable. It could possibly remove the stigma some of they may have around English but more importantly allow them to engage in stories without someone else reading it to them which will essentially help with their overall independence. I would definitely love to use this immersive reading in the smaller group settings with the children next year.
Assistive technology has progressed so much in recent years. Even the capabilities of technology has advanced, thus making it so useful for the children in school. I am a mainstream class teacher and last year was my first year as a special educational teacher. Although I used my own laptop, I would like to get the kids learning through ipads to help assist them when working on English. The children struggle to spell, write etc which I do work on, but I feel that they could make stories by recording themselves and using various software programs to help them progress with their storytelling skills.
Audio to text us another key area I think is greatly beneficial, as any child who is physically unable to write, it does not take away their independence of having to rely on someone to write what they want to say or type. They get the sense of independence showing how important assistive technology can be for them.When looking at the learning experience standard for the children, we can see that assistive technology has endless amounts of possibilities to help them create their own books, comics, stories. I really think this is so useful for children who cannot physically write. It helps with their self esteem and may motivate them to write a story as they know they can safely say they did all of the work by themselves. Before, they may not have felt that they did it on their own if you wrote it for them, so we can see the benefits of assistive technology on their own self worth.
