Technology is growing at an exponential rate and an overwhelming number of tools are available to support students who struggle with reading and writing tasks. Here are a just a few inexpensive or free options that can help school students achieve greater success and better prepare them for college or university:

By the time struggling readers reach high school, many have shut down or given up completely. For years, reading classroom material has been difficult, if not impossible, and they’ve rarely if ever experienced the pure joy of getting lost in a captivating story, or the excitement of learning something amazing from a non-fiction passage. Instead, they’ve spent most of their school days sitting in desks filled with textbooks they cannot read. 

When students don’t read, over time we begin to see a decline in both their language and comprehension. They suffer from not having experience with the vocabulary, concepts and ideas expressed in text. Their spelling and writing skills are impacted and their overall achievement is often limited.

Fortunately, technology is revolutionizing the lives of struggling readers and opening the doors to a literary world far beyond their reading abilities. A variety of digital options exist, but audiobooks provide a simple, effective way to motivate and re-engage struggling readers of all ages. Audiobooks have been around for quite some time, but until recently, they have been expensive and not always readily  available. Now, most students have their own mobile device and books are easily accessible through a variety of sources . . .