News You Can Use

As children grow and develop, stories are a magical part of a child’s life, building imagination and curiosity while teaching about the surrounding world. Reading provides opportunities for children to engage in discussions and build language skills.

Virginia Educators are committed to transforming the educational experiences for students— where learning opportunities to innovate, create, and pursue passions become the norm rather than the exception. What possibilities await your classroom in 2018?

Digital text or text on screen provides opportunities for students with disAbilities to be more efficient, productive, and independent in the classroom. Using text on screen can assist these individuals with many daily life activities. See what students are saying about text on screen.

AIM-VA has a library of over 10,000 accessible instructional materials including a wide variety of accessible formats of favorite reading books. As educators who become Digital Rights Managers (DRMs) order materials for students, these materials are housed in AIM-VA’s digital library, ready for others to quickly order and download for their qualifying students.

One popular book series with is Here’s Hank by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver.

The use of digital materials and technology in the classroom allows students to practice these 21st century skills in the educational setting daily; building independence and preparing them for a career in the future. Incorporating digital materials and technology for learning provides opportunities for students with diverse learning styles and abilities to contribute to group activities in the inclusion classroom. These tech tools adjustably scaffold reading and writing tasks for struggling learners. Students with a disability are able to rise to a higher level of learning, becoming active learners in a group setting and building confidence and skills that are needed beyond the classroom.

One of the central beliefs of the AIM-VA project is that accessible instructional materials should be provided to the students that need them in a timely manner; that all reasonable steps are taken in order to allow students with disabilities to receive accessible formats at the same time as other students receive instructional materials at school. To that end, AIM-VA has developed multiple systems to ensure that you, as a DRM, can prepare for the next school-year before this current school-year ends. Whether you’re a TVI requesting braille conversion and need a large amount of lead time, an elementary reading specialist that wants to convert an entire years’ worth of “short readers”, or you are just an educator looking to get a head start to ease the welcome-back workload; use the following tips to help yourself prepare for the 2017-2018 school-year.

Schools and libraries across the country, as well as organizations, such as Scholastic and Barnes & Noble^®, offer many reading challenges and activities for students during the summer. Public Libraries began actual summer reading programs in the 1890’s to encourage children to read during the months when they were not in school; receiving continuous exposure to literature and reading instruction. These summer reading programs incentivize students to keep reading in the summer to retain skills for positive reading achievement outcomes when returning to school in the fall.

D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read), is a national month-long celebration designed to remind individuals of all ages to make reading a priority and to honor the Newberry Award winning author, Beverly Cleary. Mrs. Cleary wrote about D.E.A.R. in her book, Ramona Quimby, Age 8 which was published in 1981. D.E.A.R.'s sponsors are telling everyone to "drop" whatever they are doing, including chores or errands, and pick up a good book to celebrate our beloved author, her timeless stories, and the joy of reading during the month of April. Make sure your students have a good selection of D.E.A.R books to read on their digital devices so they can contribute to classroom conversations as well as practice their reading accommodations.

HOORAY! Spring is on the way. Whether families are headed to the beach, camping, amusement parks or even a staycation, it’s a great time to practice using those reading accommodation tools with real-life reading opportunities. Using reading tools such as text-to-speech during fun, low stress, literacy activities help to build independence and encourage practice with the tool-based skills needed for more academic reading when returning to school.

Welcome to Print Disability Week, where I will be posting once a day about ways to receive services for a print disability, with a webinar on Thursday in collaboration with AIM-VA, an accessible educational materials provider for students with print disabilities in grades K-12 in Virginia. Today, I will be sharing things I wish I knew about having a print disability back when I was in high school, and things I have used.