9th grader, normal IQ, almost non-reader-help

: I love your phrase paradigm shift and your willingness to help this student. What if he were blind? He sounds as if he needs much the same academic accomodations as would a blind student.My son has a severe reading disability and we needed to do a great deal to enable him to get through school successfully. It can be done and it is a great deal of work but,as you said, it has also been a great deal of stress.That school is recognizing the serious nature of this student’s disability, though, and working to try to meet it might lessen the stress. It always help to be able to believe that the teachers really are on your side.Good luck.theI have a student with a severe reading disability. Reading is a very
: laborious process for him. When he started high school this year
: we put him on a non-diploma track program that was more
: vocationally oriented. I know it’s been frustrating for him
: because he’s been placed with students who have IQ’s around 70.
: He’s in the average IQ range and simply isn’t feeling the
: intellectual challenge. His parents and I have talked about trying
: him in our core special ed classes next year so that he can walk
: with a diploma instead of a certificate. This means finding ways
: to make him successful in English, Physical Science, and World
: History. I plan on having the his texts put on tape, have him
: record lectures, and dictate his homework, assignments, and tests
: on tape. He’ll also have the benefit of a tutorial support period.
: I’m wondering if anyone out there has had a similar student and
: found the means of making them successful with as little stress to
: all involved. His reading is progressing, but at a second grade
: level it will be difficult to modify such a large quantity of
: work. It will mean our sped staff will need to make a paradigm
: shift in the way they perceive his needs. Any help or suggestions
: would be greatly appreciated. I want to be prepared with the
: strategies before we move ahead with this plan of attack. Many
: thanks!

This is a kid who should be hooked into all the great computer technology available. Dragon Naturally Speaking or ViaVoice voice recognition software could be used for him to dictate written assignments directly into a word processing program. After highlighting sections of text, these programs will read aloud back to the student the text now actually in the document so he can hear if there are any errors in what the program wrote as his words. Similarly, there are reading software systems such as Kurzweil and WYNN. These allow one to scan in any text and then have the computer software to save it as a file and read selected sections aloud. The program highlights the words it is reading so the student can follow along on screen and it could only help his reading to do this. One can also cut and paste a set of study notes, as well as immediately click on words to get a dictionary definition of new vocabulary etc. The downside is that if you buy all the latest editions of these products and a computer system from scratch it can cost many thousands of dollars for one setup. However,I have begun patching together a similar set of functions for less money after reading about a teacher who works with low vision students at a community college who did a low budget version of these reading software programs. Consider getting a slightly older model computer with at least 500 mHz processor and at least 128K RAM (probably for less than $700). I got last year’s edition of ViaVoice for less than $40. A decent scanner can be be had for around $100. You need one that optimizes optical character recognition rather than photo scanning. OCR software may come with the scanner but if not TextBridge or other OCR software should be available for less than $100. When the text is scanned into the computer it is a “picture” of the text, but the OCR converts it to an actual document with characters for each letter (as you would get if you typed it in). The text read aloud function in ViaVoice (or DNS) can be used to read aloud any text from any document and highlight the word it is reading as it goes along. Any word processing program can be used cut and paste a set of study notes. The teacher at the community college goes to Kinkos to have the spines cut off textbooks and many pages of the textbook scanned in quickly using a tray attachment to the scanner. Having a textbook chapter as a computer file is far more useful than textbook on tape because one can easily focus in on a section one might particularly want to study. The computer skills this student would develop would also be a marketable skill. I have not completely got my low budget system put together yet, but after using ViaVoice I do not see any reason it would not work. By the way the most important thing to get the VR software working well is to train the software to the individuals speech and properly use the correction function in order to build up a high degree of accuracy in the software’s recognition of the words spoken. Perhaps you have a computer savvy person who can help you with the technology.