Personalizing Reading for Students of All Abilities
Yevgen Borodin, PhD, CEO, Capti Voice
As you know, almost every teacher is facing a classroom where a significant number of students are struggling to read. According to the U.S. Department of Education, over 2/3 of K-12 students in Elementary School, Middle School, and High School read below grade level.
The statistics are staggering as to what teachers are dealing with. Significant reading difficulties can be found in various student populations. Over 7 million (14%) students in K-12 public schools were receiving Special Education services in 2017–18. Many of them, (2.4 Million) have specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia, vision loss, attention deficit, and other cognitive impairments that impede visual reading comprehension. English language learners (ELs), 4.6 million (9.6%) in 2016, is yet another struggling population. On top of this, some 20 million general education students are falling behind for a variety of socio-economic reasons, hidden disabilities, or a lack of motivation.
It sure would be easy to work with a homogeneous classroom. Alas, most teachers find themselves in a classroom with students who have a wide range of needs and abilities.
Improving reading skills: what can you do about it?
Leadership wants teachers to personalize learning for all of their students. First, “No Child Left Behind”, then “Every Child Succeeds.” If only teachers could work with their students one on one to find an individualized approach to each student. Alas most teachers have a large classroom and have their hands full with the required curriculum, which leaves them little time for differentiating content, and even less time for personalizing content to individual learners.
Education technology comes to the rescue, offering magical time-saving tools. We are, indeed, seeing game-changing results with students reading faster and comprehending content better when using education technology such as scanner apps, text to speech, contextual translation, and magnification. The only problem is that teachers have to juggle 5–10 disparate tools just to support their students’ needs. Sounds familiar? Now try to get these tools to work with your curriculum, on your Chromebooks and Chrome Tablets, with your Google Classroom.
The Benefits of an All-in-One Solution
At Capti, we’ve listened to teachers and created a universally-accessible all-in-one solution to help them personalize reading more efficiently. Capti Voice is a research-based Literacy and Learning platform that provides reading accommodations and improves skills for students across all ability levels — from Special Ed. to AP, from EL to World Languages (LOTE).
Most importantly, Capti easily integrates with Google Classroom and Google Docs, which means your students get all the reading support they need without having to leave Google Classroom or having to remember yet another password — all within a single app. Say goodbye to a collection of apps that won’t work on your Chromebooks and Chrome tablets. And it does not hurt that Capti is also extremely easy to use.
Figure 1. Using Capti Chrome extension to personalize reading on Google Classroom
First of all, Capti Chrome browser extension makes any website, including Google Classroom, accessible with text to speech, advanced text customization options for vision, dyslexia, and attention deficit, as well as language supports such as definitions and translations (Fig. 1).
Teachers can also install Capti app from the Chromebook App Hub on a Chromebook or Chrome Tablet. Teachers can then assign Captifi-ed reading passages, quizzes, and tests by sharing them directly to Google Classroom (Fig 2). Capti works with your content and your curriculum. It will load any digital content including Google documents, PDF, EPUB, Bookshare, etc., enrich it and make it immediately accessible for students with disabilities and other needs (Fig. 3). You can even take a photograph of a worksheet or a page in a book with your smartphone, make it digitally readable, and deliver it to the students who need it, all in under a minute.
Because you can’t improve what you do not measure, Capti now helps teachers assess six foundational reading skills — the very skills responsible for students’ ability to read effectively. Not only does Capti help find out why students struggle to read, but it also offers personalized recommendations teachers can use to develop a focused intervention strategy and help students become proficient readers faster.
Figure 2. Assigning Capti-fied articles by sharing then from Capti to Google Classroom
Capti is grounded in research, and it has been very well recognized with a dozen federal research grant awards, including those from the U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation. It also received many industry awards including those from the MIT Technology Review, EdTech Digest, and Federal Communication Commission. But all the awards pale in comparison with what customers have to say about Capti:
“I have learners more than two grade levels below able to read content and understand concepts within our science and social studies units,” said Jennifer Simicich, Teacher, Shoreham-Wading River School District
Capti is an all-in-one literacy and learning platform that will help educators spend more time teaching and less time logging into various tools and figuring out how to use new technology.
Learn more about how to use Capti with Google for Education Products.
E-mail info@captivoice.com or call 888–533–7884 to request more information, schedule a demo, refer to a colleague, or introduce us to the Decision Maker.
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Figure 3 Viewing the assigned reading in Capti app (from AppHub or on captivoice.com)
