Assisting the Reluctant

and Remedial Reader

with Electronic Texts
(eBooks)
Terry Cavanaugh
http://drscavanaugh.org/ebooks/
Understanding Student Readers

• Strategic readers are able to use strategies, such as

prediction, drawing inferences, recognizing cause and effect
relationships, summarizing, questioning, and rereading.
• Reluctant readers usually are able to read any material that
is interesting to them. Reluctant readers are frustrated by text they
find difficult and do not understand how to effectively apply reading
strategies to ease their burden.
• Remedial readers typically reading several grade levels
below their peers. They have a limited vocabulary and few
internalized strategic reading skills. Often, remedial readers have
stalled at or below a fourth-grade reading level and need help
reading and understanding information from high school texts.
Adapted from Glencoe Online’s Teaching Today
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/29
 Finding Appropriate
Reading Material
• Readability
• Variety
• Interest
Readability
Tools
Web Based

Will also create CBA

reading probes
Readability
Tools
MS Word
Simplified
versions

Word:
Autosummarize

Abridged
 Variety

Short stories

Stories by
Children

Graphic Novels

Comics
 Techniques for Helping
Struggling Readers
• Offer a Wide Range of Reading Materials
• Incorporate Large-Print Materials
• Engage Multiple Modalities
• Teach Important Vocabulary
• Use Pre and Active Reading Techniques
Wide Range of Reading Materials
• One of the ways that electronic books can assist with for
the reluctant and remedial readers is an expansion of the
classroom and school library to include more books than
are currently there.
• In most schools eBook files and programs will run on the
currently available school computers.
• EBooks are available from free online libraries and more
books available for purchase from electronic book
stores.
• Literally tens of thousands of free eBooks available
through the web student can drastically increase the
chances of a finding something of interest to them to
read.
Non-fiction
Modern Science Fiction
Modern Romance
Picture Books
Early Readers
More options
 Large Print Materials
• One issue of reading is
• Reading miscues,
the legibility of the
including misreading
material being read by
syllables or words;
the student.
skipping syllables, words,
• Students who struggle or lines; rereading lines;
with reading, regardless and ignoring punctuation
of the reason, can benefit cues were found to be
from changing to larger virtually eliminated when
font sizes, i.e., 14 or 16 students read large print
point as a reading
Standard publishing font size.
scaffold.
11-pt Times New Roman
Large Print font size.

16-pt Verdana
Large Print
 More Large Print
Currently many teachers and librarians already use large
print materials for their students who have:
• Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
• Difficulty with encoding or decoding
• Dyslexia
• Large or small motor deficits
• Amblyopia or "Lazy Eye"
• Light sensitivity
• Short term memory deficits
• Tracking issues
• Visual impairments
(galeschools.com 2004, Reluctant Reader Center)
 Digital Big Books
Using a computer
showing an
eBook, a video
projector and a
screen, teachers
can create their
own digital big
books.
 Engage Multiple Modalities
Involving multiple or varying modalities of learning,
such as listening, can improve reading. Often an
observation of a reluctant or remedial reader
shows a student who is troubled when reading a
passage, but often the student can also display
good comprehension from listening to the same
passage. It is important to present text
information in more modalities than just print,
such as presenting the material orally to the
student.
 Text-to-Speech

Audible output
with
synchronized
highlighting
FLASH eBooks
 Video
eBooks

Computer
video

DVD
Captions
 Audio
eBooks
MP3
Audio Books
read along with
unabridged
version
Digital Story
Books
read and listen
on a device

CD storybooks

LeapPad
Vocabulary
• Interactive
dictionaries
• Search for terms in
context
 Reading Strategies
Pre-Reading
• Cover/Title Concept
• Anticipation & Prediction
• Structure of text
• Word/vocabulary Search
• Executive Summary
Active/Guided Reading
• Selective Highlighting
• Power Highlighting
• Margin/Sticky Notes
• Single Sentence
Summary
• Bookmark/Flag
• Buddy Reading
• Crystal Ball
• QAR
• Literary Elements
 Field Dependent
[field sensitive] – Full Screen
 Visual
Support