Assisting Students with Diverse Learning Styles
Writing
There are many supports for children who struggle with writing.
The use of dry erase boards is beneficial for concepts or writing paragraphs. Some are even magnetic which allows students to use and arrange letters on the board.
Pre-writing software like Inspiration is used for concept mapping and brainstorming. Inspiration can also convert information into outline from with text to speech features. There are also Web 2.0 tools like Popplet and Bubbl.us which are free and do not require a download.
Many students with written language concerns have decoding or spelling deficits. There are many different hand-held spelling dictionaries or spellcheckers. It is important to have many different functions on this type of tool as a number of students with written language problems have additional educational concerns. Talking Word Processor (TWP) from Premier offers several different functions to assist struggling writers. TWP provides speech feedback as the student writes as well as incorporates tools for reading. Reading also improves a student’s editing, comprehension and organization. Frequently users will find TWP have dictionaries built into the software. If this software needs to be portable looking at the portable word processor could be beneficial.
The Alpha Smart NEO and the Fusion are examples of portable word processors to take in the classroom for notes, working on assignments or writing papers. Both examples have the features of word predictors, organization and file saving.