Textbooks: Reading or Not,
Here They Come By Rose McKenzie, MACUL Grant Recipient
All across the country thousands of textbooks were handed out to students this past September. How many students were handed textbooks they can’t or won’t read? How many are not reading your classroom’s print materials? While there are certainly a number of students who don’t read their books because they just won’t put in the effort, for many students the effort required to decode their classroom textbooks is well beyond a reasonable expectation. As a special educator I frequently run into parents who devote their evening hours to reading their child’s textbooks out loud to them at home. I think most general educators’ would be shocked to know the number of parents who are providing this service to their child, so that he or she will have a chance at passing their classes. And what about the children whose parents do not read school work to them, either because the parents don’t have the time, inclination or (just as likely), the ability to read the text themselves? How do these students get by in school? What can you do to help all students access required reading for your classroom?
Many schools now purchase audio editions of their textbooks in CD or DVD format. These audio editions are most often read by trained professionals so they are usually easy for students to understand. With permission from the publisher, the audio version can be transferred to MP3 format and put on MP3 players, a device that is almost universally available to students. Transferring audio to MP3 devices makes the textbook more
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portable and helps students feel less different from their reading peers. Audio format of novels and some other general reading material are readily available for purchase at sites such as Amazon, Simply Audio,
Audible.com and Audible Kids.
If students have adequate access to the Internet at home then an online edition of a textbook read with text to speech support
Winter 2011-12 | MACULJOURNAL
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