Differentiated Reading Instruction: Strategies and Technology Tools to Help All Students Improve

by Jules Csillag

Overview

Learn how tech tools can make it easier to differentiate reading instruction, so you can reach all of your students and help them increase their fluency and comprehension. This practical guide brings together evidence-based principles for differentiated reading instruction and user-friendly tech tools, to help middle level students grow as readers in fun, interactive, and engaging ways. You’ll find out how to:

• Use text-to-speech tools to facilitate decoding and fluency development;
• Develop tech-based vocabulary lessons for direct and contextual instruction;
• Get your students engaged in research and nonfiction texts with videos, custom search engines, and interactive annotation tools;
• Differentiate your fiction reading instruction with visualization, prediction, and summarization exercises;
• Encourage students to enhance their reading through using dictation software and diverse Google tools;
• Create your own formative and summative assessments for students at all levels of reading ability.

Throughout the book, ideas are provided for both basic technology use and for more advanced applications—so no matter your comfort level with technology, you’ll find strategies that you can implement in your classroom immediately.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138641228
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/10/2016
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Jules Csillag is a licensed speech-language pathologist, learning specialist, and a teacher of students with speech and language disabilities. She has presented at conferences such as ISTE, LDA, ILA, ASHA, and the Everyone Reading Conference.

Table of Contents

Meet the Author

Introduction: What is Reading, and How Can I Help?

• What is reading?
• From Decoding to Higher Level Thinking, and Everything in Between
• Language Comprehension and Reading Comprehension
• Reading and the Brain

• Teachers’ Changing Roles
• How Technology and Reading are an Ideal Match
• How to Use this Book
• A Note about the Technology in this Book

Chapter 1: What Do You Mean by "Differentiation"?

• Long Ago and Far Away, the Greeks Warned Us
• Differentiation vs Tracking
• Types of Differentiation
• Differentiation by Interest
• Differentiation by "Learning Style"
• Differentiation by Readiness

• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiation: Two Sides of the Same Coin
• Differentiation by UDL Categories
• Group Names, Group Members, and Group Selection

• Differentiation and the Law
• Frameworks for Differentiation
• Reflection

Chapter 2: What Do Your Students Know? Formative Assessments for Differentiation

• Growth Mindset
• How it Works and How Technology can Help
• Formative Assessment via Forms & Quizzes
• Google Forms and Sheets
• Other Options for Collecting Formative Assessments via Forms & Quizzes (LMS & more)

• Formative Assessment via Audio and Video Recordings
• Create a Screen recording, Voice recording, and/or Video recording

• Formative Assessment via Sorting Activities
• Reflection

Chapter 3: What Does This Say? Differentiating for Decoding and Reading Fluency

• Why Decoding and Fluency Matter
• What to Expect: Typical Decoding and Fluency Development
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
• How Technology Can Help (and How it Can’t)
• Text-to-Speech Tools
• Built-in Tools
• Text-to-Speech Tools with Additional Features
• Turning Images into Text: Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
• Podcasts for Some, or Podcasts for All
• eBooks & Audiobooks
• Closed Captioning for Videos

• Providing Audio Instructions and Feedback for Students
• Student-Generated Voice and Audio Recordings to Enhance Fluency
• Reflection

Chapter 4: What Does This Mean? Part 1: Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction

• Two approaches to Instruction: Direct and Contextual
• Tools for Direct Instruction
• Tools for Contextual Instruction
• Tools that can be used for either approach (& how)
• Reflection

Chapter 5: What Does This Mean? Part 2: Differentiating During the Research Process and Reading Nonfiction

• Why Reading Nonfiction Matters
• What Reading Nonfiction Entails
• Digital Literacy

• Videos
• Creating a YouTube Playlist

• Creating Custom Search Engines
• Annotation Tools
• Using DocentEDU
• Annotating Multiple Sources

• Differentiated Complexity
• Summaries
• Reflection

Chapter 6: What Does This Mean? Part 3: Differentiating During Fiction Reading

• Why Fiction Matters
• What Reading Fiction Entails
• Visualization Tools
• Explicit Text Structure Instruction & Inferences
• Interactive Units
• Exemplars of Interactive Units
• Make Your Own!

• Summaries
• Reflection

Chapter 7: Can You Tell Me About It? Differentiating Writing (to Help Reading Comprehension)

• Why Writing Matters for Reading
• What Writing (to Read) Entails
• Speech-to-Text
• Built-in Tools
• Other Dictation Software

• Word Prediction
• Scaffolds: Cloze Tasks, Mnemonics, and Questions
• Reflection

Chapter 8: How Much Do You Know? Differentiating Summative Assessments

• Putting it all Together
• Quiz-creation (Review)
• Slideshow creation tools (Review & Some New Ideas)
• Rubrics
• Infographic Generators
• Reflection

Editorial Reviews

We know differentiated instruction helps us reach all learners. In this book, Jules Csillag gives us a variety of strategies to differentiate reading using technology tools. Using guidelines inspired by UDL, she helps the reader understand how UDL fits with differentiation using multiple means of representation, vocabulary, and ways of building meaning from text. This will be an excellent resource for reading teachers who want to reach every student.” —Vicki Davis, @coolcatteacher, Author of Reinventing Writing and The Cool Cat Teacher Blog

“One of the most common complaints I hear from colleagues is the growing demand for adjusting teaching to include technology yet the shrinking amount of planning time to do so. This book is a great resource for teachers in that regard. The author has not only organized it well, but has considered the ‘scaffolding’ of information, making the strategies user-friendly no matter the technological skill or experience of the reader.” – Allie Hannon, English Teacher, Tomahawk Creek Middle School, Midlothian, Virginia

From the Publisher