reading pen II

Don’t have one, but have heard they are not the best. Seems that you have to scan “just right” to get it to work well.

Last year I had four students on Reading Pens. None of them liked it. Reasons:

1. Scanning the word takes too long. If you don’t get it just right it will not work. It actually took them longer to read with the pen. It really affected comprehension.

2. Too many buttons for students with ADHD. Pressing buttons and reprogamming was often a problem.

3. The pen is absolutely horrible for students with fine motor skills issues because of the scanning mechanism.

The pens lasted one month and they have been occupying space in my cabinet ever since.

Laurie

I teach in an elementary resource program. I have used the Reading Pen in my class for two years. I feel that it is an extremely valuable tool for reading. I just finished a research study with 4th-6th graders. The students were trained to use the Pen and all of them were able to successfully use the Pen. In the training I made sure to teach that the students needed to start scanning on the word before and go into the word after. I also had three left-handed students in my study and they were all able to successfully use the Pen as well. The students that benefited the most from the Pen were the students with learning disabilities. They cut their errors in half compared to when they had no Pen. They also remembered the words the next day. I interviewed the students after the study and they all had positive comments about the Reading Pen II. One girl with a learning disability said, “With the Pen I understood the story a lot better - cause the words made sense and if I just guessed at it and it was wrong the story didn’t make sense.” Another girl with a learning disability said, “If I was reading and got to a word I didn’t know, if I just skipped over it - it might be a really important word that I might need to knwo and if I didn’t skip over it I would use the Quicktionary Pen. Then the whole book would sound more interesting. It would sound more like it’s supposed to.”

Along with other reading strategies, the Reading Pen II is an important tool to successful reading for students with reading difficulties.

I certainly can see the advantages to students with learning difficulties, however, in my case the students that used the pens had CAPD and ADHD and didn’t do as well. The pens were only given to the students with CAPD as recommended by our assistive technology committee. I am certainly not discounting it importance in reading, just relaying my students experience with it. Thank you for your response.

Laurie

Thanks for the input it seems it would be easier for my child to use the pen instead of a dictionary or asking me about a word and it would raise her self esteem for reading on her own.

you might consider first getting a Franklin speller—I picked one up at Best Buy for $19.95. Despite its name, it’s not just for spelling—you type in the word and get a list of synonyms (and as I recall short definitions). It also has some word games like hangman and a telephone book function. The advantage of the reading pen is that you don’t have to type in the word, just scan it, and a computerized voice reads it and will read the definition as well. Franklin doesn’t read out the words, so if pronunciation from the written word is a problem it won’t help. You can get speaking dictionaries (I think Franklin makes one)—I recall that they start out around $50 or $60. (You can find some on Amazon’s site—unfortunately the spec write-ups tend to be incomplete and, thus, frustrating.) The $20 Franklin might be adequate if you think your child would do all right typing in the word (doesn’t have to be 100% accurate as the spelling function will catch typos) and could manage reading the definitions and synonyms. It doesn’t not have the same cool factor as reading pen II, but then it’s a whole lot cheaper.

Not for $20 :) but there are talking versions of Franklin spellers that will read you the word.

Great hangman playing, too :)

A talking speller with definitions is offered in the new just-out American Girl catalogue. Like most AG things it’s probably a bit pricier than the same thing without the AG logo but for girls in a certain age group that logo makes it cool (and, one hopes, more likely to be used). Its priced at $60 and includes a grammar guide for writing. My non-LD daughter went through the new catalogue circling the myriad things she wanted (dream on) and this was one of them.

Unless it comes with a velcro and strap, we’d lose it! The computer in the classroom’s easier, we havent’ lost one yet!

Spell checkers are also a valuable tool. I am a elementary resource teacher and use it with all of my students grades 1-6. I only use the talking Franklin Spell Checkers (franklin.com). Students with learning disabilities need to hear the words because they can’t read many of them. There are many versions but I use the bright blue one for $50 for my students in grades 1-3. It not only is a spell checker but it provides simplified dictionary definitions, individual spelling games, and a cursive writing feature that show you how to form letters in cursive and manuscript. This one is $50. For the older students I use a more sophisticated version. It gives the complete dictionary definition, thesaurus, individual spelling games, calculator, and more. This one is $100.

I use both the Franklin Spell Checkers and Reading Pen II (the Pen that scans the words and reads it for you with the definition).