Fluency issues & Middle schoolers - iPad apps

Thank you for web address. I have been looking for information about dragon, were they were not trying to sell me the product.

Take a look at Flashcards Deluxe for sight words, which allows for auditory and visual component created by user. Also, you might want to check out Timed Reading Lite to see if the full version might meet your needs. The lite “free” version only goes up to 4th grade, but will let you try it out to see if it might be beneficial at higher level.

My favorite is Tune Wiki which takes your iTunes library and displays the words like karaoke. You can also use Dragon to have student record their voice as they are reading and then play it back for instant feedback.
[Modified by: dhfl143 on May 15, 2011 12:09 AM]

Another idea is to download a PDF into GoodReader or iBooks and highlight phrases alternating highlighteto and unhighlighted phrases to help students with chunking.

For example, if your first sentence of your post was the first sentence of a page of a book or PDF, you could highlight “I am” in yellow, unhighlight “looking”, highlight “for some different apps” in yellow, unhighlight “for students”, highlight “in middle school” in yellow, and unhighlight “significant fluency issues”….

In addition, in general settings, under accessibility, turn on “ask” for triple click home button to be able to turn voice over on and off quickly and easily. Then use VoiceOver in conjunction with iBooks to model phrasing.
[Modified by: dhfl143 on May 15, 2011 12:34 AM]

In addition, this article outlines how voice recognition software (e.g. dragon) may be used to help students increase fluency:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ipod-improves-reading-skills
[Modified by: dhfl143 on May 18, 2011 02:05 AM]