Authentic Stories to Motivate and Reward Struggling Readers
SPEAKING STORIES is for readers who struggle with reading comprehension. Until third grade, readers are learning to recognize and decode words and simple sentences (“learning to read”). From third grade on, readers are learning to comprehend progressively more difficult text, as they read to expand their worlds (“reading to learn”). Readers who are not native English speakers, or come from underserved communities, or have various types of learning disabilities, may have a lot of trouble comprehending what they read.
For good readers, reading is a self-reinforcing, confidence building process. For struggling readers, reading is hard work with little pay-off. They plod through pages of text, often grasping only pieces of the story or article. It’s a lonely, disempowering struggle that often leads to hating reading.
What Speaking Stories Offer
The Speaking Stories reading tool is carefully constructed to provide readers with continuous practice in the comprehension strategies good readers use. For good readers, these strategies are intuitive and mostly unconscious. For poor readers, these strategies begin as conscious skills and become automatic over time. Sound, pictures, and comprehension structures reinforce comprehension strategies without interrupting the flow of the story.
Autonomy and Motivation
Experiments show adults prize autonomy more than money. We think kids and youth prize autonomy just as much. We designed Speaking Stories so the interface is simple enough for a non-reader to use. The tool is user-driven and the user initiates almost all of the possible actions—when to play sound, when to move ahead or back, when to answer questions, even in what sequence to read. Readers move at their own pace and by their own choice, as good readers do.
Sound and Pictures
In Speaking Stories, it’s no surprise the story speaks: individual words speak, paragraphs speak, word definitions speak. For readers with good aural comprehension, hearing the text helps them understand it. For readers with poor aural comprehension, seeing the written text strengthens their ability to hear spoken words.
It may be surprising that pictures play an essential role in Speaking Stories. Clear and concise drawings render written text into visual images, providing visual thinkers and visual learners access to meaning that eludes them in words. You may notice that the drawings precede the relevant text and are always centered on the page. This is by design, because the drawings are not decorations, they are vital comprehension supports for many readers.
Errorless Learning
Special needs learners often deal with anxiety and depression. We could say most struggling readers approach reading with an underlying sense of dread and hopelessness. For these readers, there is errorless learning. Errorless learning provides learners with an environment where they can be successful and develop confidence. Each section primes the reader with the question that will be asked at the end. Sections are short enough that readers can scroll back to clarify what happened. And readers have several chances to answer questions correctly, and everyone can get the cool visual reward!
More About Speaking Stories
The Speaking Stories reading tool was developed by an eclectic group of educators. One is a highly skilled, life-long teacher of English Language Learners. One has developed and introduced Visual Tools for Learning at the Elementary school level. One has a Masters of Arts in Teaching in the field of Visual Studies. One is a national expert in reading comprehension for readers on the Autism Spectrum.
These skills are complementary and synergistic. Our goal is to provide a rich and rewarding reading experience for a wide range of readers.