Recently I had the opportunity to visit my old high school in Lexington, Kentucky to work with special education teachers using Listenwise. First, let me say it’s been a long time since I’ve been through the doors of Lafayette High School. 30 years in fact! I needed to get directions to the library; I’m embarrassed to admit.
I met Danielle Easley and other special education teachers in the library for the presentation. Despite the fact that we were in the library, they allowed me to play some of my favorite stories on Listenwise. Danielle has become a regular Listenwise user. She tells us that the audio stories were “very helpful to me during my speaking and listening unit this year. I would play the stories at the beginning of the class and ask the students to respond in a journal entry. Since the website has already formulated questions for each story, it was easy to begin a discussion after they have completed their journal. The text to speech feature came in handy, for my students that are struggling readers.”
Special education teachers are challenged more than others
to
find resources that can be adapted for each student. With Listenwise Premium we can help them meet the needs of all of their students. Listenwise Premium gives you the power to personalize assignments in an online platform with student accounts.
Our Interactive Transcripts are built-in literacy supports for struggling readers or ELLs. They operate like live captioning and give students the ability to do close listening, re-listening, and cite evidence. And many stories you can slow down the audio like this story on Coming to America. The supports are researched based reading and language instruction. If you’d like more ideas on how to use Listenwise in your special education classroom, read this blog!
After the professional development seminar, I walked the halls to find my old locker. It was hard to pinpoint which one was mine, but I took a guess (and a selfie). It turns out Lafayette has some problems with students stashing contraband in their lockers so now all of the lockers a bolted shut. That’s a big change from when I attended. Our lockers were the focus of our social lives and were carefully decorated as a way to express ourselves. Times have changed!
