In Secondary English Language Development we often have a disproportional percentage of students with learning difficulties. This is due to their peers testing out of ELD services as they move through elementary and middle school while these students are often unable to complete this requirement. This is also due to how often they fail to receive appropriate services because their needs are hidden to their teachers behind a language barrier. While physical and sensory difficulties can be easier to identify and approach, schools often do not have the resources in place to delineate language deficits from cognitive ones. Also, while we are aware that our population of English Learners also face a disproportionate risk of dropping out for a variety of reasons, it is also home to a population of gifted students that are often overlooked. These Gifted and Talented EL students can also be assisted by technology in fulfilling their full potential. Below I have listed some of the resources I have had success with in helping students overcome these challenges in my classroom.
Featuring bilingual speech-language pathologist Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan. This webcast discusses effective assessment and instruction strategies for English language learners with learning disabilities, as well as ways to help encourage the active involvement of parents of ELLs with LD in their children's schools.
The Read&Write Chrome extension is great for making a wide range of documents and websites accessible in a variety of ways. It is a tool bar that allows you to have text read aloud, it has a dictionary that will define any word you select, and it also includes a picture dictionary for emerging readers. These are just a few of the tools it offers students with cognitive disabilities.
Read&Write Helps by:
Read Theory is an online reading and comprehension tool that adapts to foster improvement by automatically meeting learners at their own, individual ability levels. This is done in an engaging gamified way in which students earn badges and track their own progress through lexile levels. Signup takes seconds and no time is spent vetting assignments. Progress is shown on an intuitive report, replete with actionable, meaningful insights. Our program is completely free and allows the teacher access to all scoring reports for each student.
Read Theory helps by:
This is a virtual visual support app to assist people with autism and communication challenges transition in the classroom. It replaces the traditional visual supports that can be cumbersome, time consuming, costly to create and limited in function. The app is easy to use, with infinite options as personalized visuals can be selected from the camera roll, camera, google images and the apps photo library. Text can be easily added to each image, supporting word recognition and language development. Designed by a father of two children with autism who works in special education, this app is a tool to help parents, caregivers, educators and therapists reduce anxiety and facilitate a calm, smooth transition anywhere, anytime.
This application helps by creating:
Tecla allows an individual to interact with their iOS and Android devices, computers, and smart home systems -- hands-free. This includes the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android smartphones and tablets, and smarthome automation systems. It works with all assistive switches on the market including buttons, sip-and-puff controllers, head arrays, joysticks and the driving controls of a wheelchair.
TECLA helps by making technology accessible for who may have limited or no ability to interact with it otherwise.
Google Docs now supports voice typing for all users which improves accessibility to this popular writing program without the need for third-party extensions or software. This function is free to use and very easy to enable on any device with a microphone. I have included a video that shows you how to get started using this feature in your classroom today.
This is helpful in that it allows students who may have difficulties using a keyboard to fully express their thoughts in a text document.
Be My Eyes is a free mobile app designed to bring sight to the blind and visually impaired. With the press of a button, the app establishes a live video connection between blind and visually impaired users and sighted volunteers. Every day, volunteers are lending their eyes to solve challenges both big and small in the lives of the blind and visually impaired. With over half a million users across 150 countries, Be My Eyes has grown to become the largest online community for the blind and visually impaired.
Be My Eyes helps by allowing visually impaired students help beyond what their teacher may have the resources to provide making for a more inclusive classroom environment.
This application contains video instruction for over 5,000+ words signed by professional ASL interpreters. This offers deaf and hard of hearing people, as well as their teacher and peers, a portable way of learning and using sign language in the classroom. Signs are searchable and divided into 7 categories that includes 765 multiple meaning words, 473 idioms, and the ASL numerical system to represent money, time, dates, and years.
This helps by creating a more inclusive and accessible learning environment for students with hearing difficulties. It also helps because many EL students may be learning English and ASL at the same time and this gives the teacher the means to communicate with a student who may otherwise be isolated.
Students who have been diagnosed with dyslexia typically present with a learning disorder that impacts in the areas of reading and well as in written language. While dyslexia impacts in a student’s ability to read, more often than not, it also impacts more in their ability to write. Typically, students with dyslexia will have trouble organizing their ideas, spelling words correctly, and constructing clearly organized paragraphs. This is where Ginger can assist. Unlike other spell checking applications, Ginger is unique and uses algorithms and a database to seek out the context of how the word is being used. With these methodologies, Ginger is able with a very high degree of probability to correctly suggest the word that was intended by the writer.
The Stress Tracker app was created by a team of leading clinical psychologists and researchers using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness principles. It provides an all-in-one personal stress management app that tracks, identifies, and helps relieve your daily stress and is currently free. It also includes a 6-point checklist for those who need immediate stress relief during a high-stress situation.
This app is helpful to at-risk students becuase it empowers them to take solid action steps to improve personal resiliency and emotional well being. This app provides evidence-based expert knowledge and practical information that guides students to make healthy choices.
Often our at-risk students face some of the harshest challenges when if comes to having access to the resources they need to be successful students. One facet of this problem is known as the homework divide, in which many ELs find themselves on the wrong side of because they lack online access at home. Kajeet is a great tool for overcoming this by allowing students to check out an internet hotspot which they can use at home to complete assignments and do research.
Kajeet allows students access to online homework and educational resources that may otherwise be out of their reach. A secondary benefit is that it allows their household access to many social services and job applications that are only accessible online.
For students entering their final year of high school, it’s imperative to keep the momentum going. And, since more than 35 percent of dropouts give up during the senior year, negating obstacles that can thrust them back into destructive behaviors takes a strong support system. To attain this significant milestone, students benefit from a sense of belonging to the community. But, for this group, the struggle lies in finding a community of supportive peers and family members.
This can be especially frustrating for first-generation high school graduates and college students. With the I’m First app, first-generation college students and high school graduates can join an online community of peers who share their same journey. It provides virtual space they can turn to for inspiration and motivation from youth just like them. They’ll have opportunities to hear and share success stories, discover colleges that care about first-gen students, find answers to questions about college, and receive guidance on the road to and through college.
This helps by inspiring at-risk students and connecting them with successful individuals from similar circumstances.
Pocket was founded to help people save interesting articles, videos and more from the web for later enjoyment. Once saved to Pocket, the list of content is visible on any device — phone, tablet or computer. It can be viewed while waiting in line, on the couch, during commutes or travel — even offline.
The world's leading save-for-later service currently has more than 22 million registered users and is integrated into more than 1500 apps including Flipboard, Twitter and Zite. It is available for major devices and platforms including iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, Kindle Fire, Kobo, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and Windows
This app is helpful for students who want keep and organize information they find online for later reading and reference. It is also a great application for recommending articles related to the individual student's interests which keeps them reading.
EDpuzzle is an online application that pulls the best educational videos that the web has to offer and allows teachers and students to enhance and annotate them with notes, questions, and voice overs which can then be shared with others teachers and learners.
This is a great application for Gifted and Talented students who are often ahead of the class and seeking additional depth and information regarding the learning objective. With EDpuzzle they can access content and assessments created by other teachers that can satisfy their thirst for more information.
Stackup automatically captures time spent reading online for both independent and assigned reading. A student’s Stackup profile provides a visual summary of total hours of online reading and time spent on each Web site visited, categorizing the student’s reading by subject matter. Teachers can assign reading by grade level, assess progress and grade online reading in real time. Students can get credit for completing reading assignments, compete with other students in reading challenges and earn badges as their reading hours add up.
This extension is ideal for Gifted and Talented students who can earn badges in a variety of subject areas that can be used as an artifact on college admissions and scholarship applications.