Speak as I Type and Text-to-Speech for Proofreading

Implementation Strategy:
Speak as I Type is a great way to encourage writers of all ages and abilities to monitor their work as they are typing. Once you teach a student how to turn on/off this feature, the teacher can ask that the student monitor their work as they are completing an assignment. For some students, you might want this feature to be "on" all the time. Speak as I Type using the "read a word" setting will help students to monitor their spelling. Speak as I Type using the "read a sentence" setting will help students to listen to their grammar and to remember to use punctuation. Teachers could include this as part of a writing assignment checklist!

Text-to-Speech can be utilized by teachers to help students gain more independence with tasks. If the teacher is providing written directions as part of an assignment, the student can simply select the "play" button so that the directions are read aloud to them. Additionally, Text-to-Speech could be used for students to proofread work that they have written themselves. This will take off the burden of students having to visually process the information. This is a great tool for students who are primarily auditory learners or for students who have difficulty with decoding, have limited sight word vocabulary, or who struggle with reading more difficult, curriculum-related vocabulary.