Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs: adapted books

Showing posts with label adapted books. Show all posts

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Help Me Read

Update May 2022 - Symbol Support Text has been proven not to prove much, if any, aid to comprehension and to be detrimental to learning to read. This post is keep up for historical purposes. Please don't use symbol supported text.

Out of the UK there is a new product for young emerging readers who use symbols. Help Me Read is a reading scheme to add Widgit Literacy symbols to the Stage 1 level of Oxford Reading Tree books and other materials. The materials include a manual communication board.

You can create books similar to the Help Me Read series by finding symbols to adapt books you all ready have.

The NYC Schools and Baltimore City Schools have downloads of Picture Communication Symbols that are pre-made for many books.

If you support PRC device/Unity users the Plano School District as materials to adapt books using Unity Symbols.

You can also symbol adapt your own books. Be sure to use these 5 Rules for Symbol Support.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Madi's in a New Book

Madi, the Dynavox using, powerchair driving star of "So Don't and See What Happens!" is back in Sour Puss with her brother and the family pet. I haven't seen it yet, by my class really enjoyed Madi in her first book and I hope we end up with a copy of Sour Puss soon. Both books ate $15.00.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Fun Things We've Been Up To in Kate's Class

We have been having a rocking good time in my classroom lately. Here are some of the things we have been up to:

Playing Hoops on the Help Kidz Learn site. Set on "easy" you still need to wait until your player aims to score a basket. We had the student nearest to the computer use a wired switch and the student further away use the Jelly Beamer. Only one of my students is a regular switch user and he has been kicking some rear end in this game. We adapted it for low vision by simply having all the staff shout, "now!" for the student with visual impairment.
Learning about and playing dreidel using Classroom Suite, our new Jelly Beamer and the LCD Projector on the big screen (we don't have a SMART board.) The Hannukah and driedel activties were downloaded from the Intellitools Activity Exchange. We listened to the information about Hannukah and driedels and then we switched over the the driedle cause and effect activity, from the same author on the exchange and passed around the Jelly Beamer to spin the driedel. We played three times today and the same student won every time!
Making "stained glass" candles for Hanukkah (yes, I know it isn't until December 21st) using the free symbol based directions from Slater Software, which we posted on the "big screen" via the LCD projector and used the Jelly Beamer to scroll down the directions as we worked through each step.
Reading Hoover's New Wheels, also downladed from the Intellitools Classroom Exchange and played a yes/no comprehension game.
Working on 1:1 correspondence, counting and greater than/less than using Power Point Presentations based on the counting candy canes presentation available from Jefferson County Schools. We do this on "the big screen" as well, and even without a SMART board it is very, very fun. One of my student inparticular is VERY motivated to point to things on the "big screen" and his accuracy increases by merely using it.
Playing "Christmas Squares" another power point from Jefferson County Schools with customized holiday questions to continue our work on yes/no.

For Christmas I would like either administrative privileges (or at least an administrator to install a few things) on the computer connected to the LCD projector or a way to make Boardmaker Player run from a flashdrive like Classroom Suite Player can. That way we would have a world of Boardmaker Activities to use on the "big screen" in addition to Classroom Suite Activities.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Alternate Format Books and Stories

Here is a collection of links to adapted and alternative format books. Most are free, some have a fee. The type of format varies. For pay interactive books like Tumblebooks and Bookflix and professionally read audio book downloads check your local libraries web site; free access may be available with your library card. (This perma post updated March 4, 2010.) Another excellent list of online alternate format books is here.

Symbol Books