Accessibility

Bookshare

Bookshare makes reading easier. People with dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers can customize their experience to suit their learning style and find virtually any book they need for school, work, or the joy of reading. Reach out to the Director of Special Ed to get more info.

BrainPoP ELL

All BrainPoP products are available via our Clever portal. BP ELL has extensive lessons for English Learners best suited for 3rd grade and above. It includes quizzes and activities and tracks student progress. For younger learners, see BP Jr.

Chromebook Accessibility Features

There are several accessibility features built into Chromebooks including:

To find and turn on these tools, follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Find accessibility features

    1. At the bottom right, select the time. Or press Alt + Shift + s.
    2. Click Settings.
    3. At the bottom, click Advanced.
    4. In the "Accessibility" section, click Manage accessibility features.
    5. Step 2: Turn on a feature

Step 2: Turn on a feature

Choose the accessibility features you'd like to use:

Read more about Chromebook accessibility

Chromebook Keyboard and Language Settings

To type in another language, you can add a keyboard layout. The Chrome OS is a multi-language operating system and makes it easy to add layouts for other languages.

To learn how to change the keyboard settings layout on a Chromebook, see this excellent article from Jim Mendenhall of the Starry Hope website and watch his video below.

Dreambox Math

DreamBox will track student progress and adapt to their learning needs.

Teachers should be using Dreambox data to create small groups and inform instruction. See META Level 3 of Dreambox to learn about using Dreambox data.

Epic! Online Books for Kids

Epic is an online library of e-books, videos and audio books that is excellent for supporting K-6 readers. Teachers will have to set up a free account to use it. Be sure to create an EDUCATOR account by using the Educator Account Page.

Note that Epic is only free at school. In order to use it at home, Epic asks families to purchase a monthly subscription. You can share that info with parents if you like.

Learn all about Epic in META

Libby

Libby is an audio and ebook app that gives you access to 1000s of books free through the public library. You must have a library card and have to abide by library return rules.

Go to https://meet.libbyapp.com/ to get information.

MindMup mind mapping

MindMup integrates with Google Drive and allows students to organize their thoughts and create an outline or mind map to assist with writing production.

Before a student can use it, they will need to do a simple one time set up. Go to https://drive.mindmup.com/ to get set up and start using it.

NewsELA

Moraga School District provides NewsELA Pro subscriptions to teachers and students in grades 3rd-8th.

NewsELA is adaptive. Over time, NewsELA creates customized reading levels for each student and presents them with articles at their current reading level.

Learn all about NewsELA in META

Quizlet for Red Words

Quizlet is a flash card online tool. These lists were developed to support K-2 students.

RAZ Kids

Moraga School District provides Raz-Kids for all K-3 students. It provides leveled eBooks at 29 different levels of reading difficulty allowing students to listen, read and record themselves reading. Students access Raz via the iPad app or online.

Students then take a corresponding eQuiz to test comprehension and determine future instruction needs. Once a child has read ten or more of the leveled eBooks and passed each of the corresponding eQuizzes, they advance on to the next reading level where they have access to lengthier and more difficult text.

Contact Curriculum and Instruction for Raz Kids account info.

Read&Write extension for Chrome

Read & Write is a powerful but easy-to-use floating toolbar that provides text to speech, speech to text typing, a picture dictionary, an audio maker, word prediction and many other literacy support tools to help with reading and writing. It has tools that work in Google Docs, websites and PDFs.

Learn all about Read&Write in META

Unite for Literacy

Great for ELL and very young readers, the Unite for Literacy online library provides free access to more than 400 original picture books that can be read aloud in over 40 languages and then read in English. The digital books provide audio narrations spoken by native speakers in warm, expressive voices. The books are likely most appropriate for third grade and below.

There is no set up needed, simply click the pencil in the upper left corner to select a narration language. Then the student can select a book to listen to in both their native language and English. When a student has finished a book, a simple activity might be to draw a picture of one thing from the book and label things in the drawing with English words learned in the story.

Voice Typing in Google Docs

Google Voice Typing can enable writers where keyboard input is a barrier. It is very simple to use. You can also use Read&Write for voice typing.

Follow these directions or watch the video below.

  1. Open a google doc.
  2. Go to the Tools menu at the top of the tool bar.
  3. Select Voice typing…
  4. Click on the image of the microphone that appears on the left.
  5. Click “Allow” the application to use the microphone.
  6. Record your writing.
  7. Be sure to speak your punctuation marks or go back and edit to add them.