THE ROLE OF A WORD PROCESSOR
Researchers have shown word processing software to be a valuable tool for assisting students with learning disabilities, especially when compensating for written language problems.
Word processing applications allow a student to produce clear, legible typed information on the screen that offers encouragement and motivation for the individual to write extra information. Word processors allow students to concentrate on the meaning of their typed information rather than being preoccupied with the mechanical aspects of writing. This is an important feature for students with writing difficulties since they can often develop a fear of translating their thoughts into written language due to their writing problems. Knowing that they can produce language at ease and correct errors at a later stage is often found to unshackle their writing abilities. For example, omitted text can be added; unsuitable words or blocks of text can be deleted; sentences and paragraphs can be moved with ease; and text can be easily formatted.
Since writing can be a difficult physical task for some students, the process of typing may be easier, neater and more rewarding for a student with fine motor problems. The editing tool is an important function for any student to use in any word processing program. It can ease the physical burden of revising, making it more manageable to correct, revise and rewrite material. Secondly, student can insert, delete, edit and change the content on the screen until the correct information has been displayed, all by the click of a button. Thirdly, after the necessary changes have been made, an individual can print off the draft, make additional changes on the page and then make the necessary corrections on the computer screen. The word processor can eliminate the need for physically re-writing and allows the student to apply more time and energy to the most important aspect of the writing process, i.e. thinking about the content, editing and revising.
Word processors allow students to express themselves at a point that is equal to their intelligence level. Since a word processor detects errors on the computer screen before the document is printed, the student can end up with a neat and organized document that helps them develop a sense of pride in their written work, as well as enhancing their image as writers. Consequently, this can result in a more positive approach to writing.
Information sourced from: Using Technology to Enhance the Writing Process of Students with Learning Disabilities, by Charles MacArthur. Online at http://www.edtechpolicy.org/MHEC/WebCT/UsingTechnologytoEnhance.pdf
and
Assistive technology and adults with learning disabilities: A blueprint for exploration and advancement, by Marshall Raskind. Learning Disability Quarterly, Summer, 1993. Available through library services.
With every new version of Microsoft Word, there are more and more accessibility options available. There are a variety of tools and utilities woven into Microsoft Word that may assist students who have writing challenges. Most students are familiar with Microsoft Word since it is available in all our schools; however, not everyone is aware of the powerful writing tools built into the program that will provide various form of assistance. There are many formatting tools, such as centering text, generating columns and tables, and altering font size and color. In addition, there are also valuable tools to help students facilitate and improve their writing. An article on using Microsoft Word to support students with dyslexia can be found here.
MS Word - Auto Correct
Located in the “tools” menu is autocorrect. There is an extensive data base of commonly misspelled and mistyped words that will be replace with the correct one when typed. You can add or delete from this list. You can use this tool for abbreviation expansion. Enter a brief abbreviation that is not a word (consider using a naming convention such as x(expand) in front of the abbreviation). For example, you can use xUS to stand for United States. The abbreviation expansion can be used for phrases, sentences, or paragraphs. Use this feature to reduce keystrokes or type frequently used words or phrases. Our email addresses are long - richard.metheny@acps.k12.md.us - I abbreviate that by typing rme and Word replaces rme with my entire address. When a word is mistyped or misspelled, the auto correct feature can automatically correct certain errors. If the first two initial letters are capitalized, auto correct will capitalize only the first letter, as well as the first letter of a sentence. A correction can replace the error as the student types, if desired. Consider adding those words that you always have difficulty spelling.Within the auto correct feature, a list of common mistakes can be added by typing in “replace ____” “with ____” in the table.
MS Word - Auto Summarize
Auto Summarize is a tool that looks for keywords within your document and those sentences that contain keywords get put into a summary. In general it does fairly good job on reports, articles, scientific papers and Theses. It does not do well on fiction, most typical correspondence, and How-to instructions. With the document open go to “Tools” menu, then to “Auto Summarize”. Auto summarize will do exactly that- summarize a document. (Example: If the text from a textbook chapter is scanned into the computer as a Word document, then the chapter can be summarized for the student.) When enabled, a window opens to question what kind of summary is needed, such as highlight key words in the document, create a new document with the summary, insert an abstract at the top of the document, or hide the document except for the summary. The student can also specify, with a percent, the length of the summary.
MS Word - Auto Text
You can reduce typing by adding phrases, tables, or graphics to AutoText. Select the text you want to add. Go to “Insert” Menu down to “AutoText” then to new. Type in the name you want to give this item. This is a great tool to use to minimize keystrokes. Frequently typed or long words and phrases can be reduced to a few letters. For example, I write Allegany County Public Schools frequently. I use auto text to reduce that to acps and my email address (richard.metheny@acps.k12.md.us) to rme.
MS Word - Creating Custom Ruled or Headed Paper
You can use the Tables and Borders toolbar in Word to make ruled paper customized to the needs of specific students. The lines can be drawn in different colors and thicknesses, grids can be created to help with lining up numbers for math activities, and enlarged graph paper can be easily produced for students who need it. Templates can also be created with headings specific to individual students or classes for students who struggle with motor aspects of writing and find the process of daily heading a paper difficult. On the left below is an example of adapted paper with contrasting yellow and white lines created in Word. A docx version of that file can be downloaded here. On the right below is an example of using Word to create a space to add three two-digit numbers with room for carrying numbers and the answer space in contrasting color. The page has this table recreated nine times. It allows students to visualize the addition process and provide controlled space in which to keep their numbers in line. Download a docx copy of that file here.
MS Word - Thesarus and Dictionary
In a first draft, students are encouraged to write their thoughts down regardless of errors before returning to edit and refine the draft. The thesaurus helps to refine writing as well as expose students to a multitude of new vocabulary words. graphic of thesarus use in MS WordStudents often have great difficulty finding a word in a dictionary since they cannot spell the word. The dictionary provides an instant definition for a highlighted word, thereby eliminating the arduous task of using a traditional dictionary.
MS Word - Text boxes
Go to the “Insert” down to “Text box” This text box will float over top of the existing text and also pictures. Use it to label a graphic/picture. Multiple boxes could be set up ahead of time with the words already entered. The student can drag the text box to the correct answer, save the document and turn in work representative of course content, not writing skill.
MS Word - Visual Changes
We all learn differently. Students may need to adjust the way a document looks for various reasons. It is important that students know the possibilities so that they can make the changes to the appearance that best fits their needs.
Zoom – The zoom does not affect the printing of a document.
Background Color – Go to “Format” menu, down to “background”, select color to make the change.
Highlight Tools – Located on the Format toolbar, this tool is located next to the font color. Select a highlight color and drag over the text you want to highlight
Changing Font Color – Allows for more control over preferred color combination. Colored font and a colored background. You can also be used to emphasize test, nouns in one color vowels in another.
Line Spacing – increase visual white space between lines to assist in tracking. You can also increase the page margins to reduce line length. Many people find it easier to use keyboard commands that to constantly stop and use the mouse. Word for Windows accommodates these people by providing several shortcuts you can use to format paragraphs.
MS Word - Writing Templates
For those students who need additional writing support, a teacher can provide structured writing opportunities by creating writing templates that may or may not include specific prompt questions for the student to answer. New templates can be created and stored in the template folder. For example, a teacher can create a template for a science or book report, a compare/contrast writing assignment, or a topic report.
The Florida Diagnostic & Learning Resources System (FDLRS) has a self paced online course called "The Wonders of Word", described as a, "course is intended to help participants learn of the power of Microsoft Word for creating documents and layouts. Participants must have working knowledge of Word and be comfortable using technology before beginning this course. Link to The Wonders of Word.
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Word processors with picture support allow students to “write with pictures”. These word processors may also have built-in text to speech and ability to program activity specific word banks. The following options are offered for a word processor with picture support:
For student produced writing, SymWriter is easier to use. If you are already familiar with Boardmaker, using the Symbolate tool to create curriculum materials that combine pictures and text is not a big leap.
Some of our students may benefit from structured writing activities with defined choices. IntelliTools Classroom Suite provides several templates to construct structured support from “errorless” writing activities through novel sentence construction with electronic word banks, with or without picture support. As an authoring program, Classroom Suite gives you the framework to create activities that directly correlate with the general education content and materials. A pdf overview of several of the templates in Classroom Suite can be found here.
We also have a series of activities built with Boardmaker called Curriculum Companion. Curriculum Companions are topic-specific curriculum supplements designed to work in conjunction with any curriculum and standards you currently use to guide your instruction. Appropriate for all students of all ages and abilities with academic goals in the K-2 grade-level, these activities can be adapted with different levels of support. Each Curriculum Companion provides support for successful reading and writing and expression. Each Curriculum Companion relates to language arts standards including: general skills of the writing process, grammatical and mechanical conventions in written compositions, general skills and strategies of the reading process, reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of informational text. In addition, a variety of science standards are addressed within each Curriculum Companion. Click here to view correlations to academic standards.
We currently have the following units:
Amazing Animals: Discuss the basic characteristics of animals!
All animals move, grow and need food. Examples of different types of movement like swimming, flying, and walking, along with differences in growth patterns and diet, will be explored.
What’s the Weather? Introduce basic weather principles!
Sun, clouds, rain, snow and wind are defined and temperatures are discussed. Students learn that the weather changes day-to-day and across seasons.
The Changing Seasons: Learn about the impact the seasons have on people and the planet!
Through the exploration of scientific concepts and ideas and background vocabulary, The Changing Seasons, dives deep and allows students to think about the broader impact that seasons have on people and the planet. Closely linked to studies about weather, it features a wide range of science, reading and writing activities that are a versatile way for any student or classroom to study or inquire about the seasons.
From Here to There: Get students thinking how transportation reflects the demands of time, geography and technology!
Your students will enjoy the ride with From Here to There. It combines instructional activities, background knowledge-building and literacy lessons that will get your students thinking about how we go from place to place, and how transportation reflects the demands of time, geography and technology.
It’s Alive: What do living things need to stay alive? What is a non-living thing?
In this unit students will learn that all people, plants, and animals are living things and that living things can grow, change, and die. Students will also learn that living things have needs such as food, water, sunlight, and air.
Community Faces and Places: Read, write and think about people and jobs in the community!
Your student will learn about the people and places that shape a community! Familiar faces such as teachers, doctors, dentists, and bus drivers are discussed. Supermarkets, farms, and schools are several of the places highlighted, prompting students to discuss people and places they see in their own communities.
and
All About Plants: Introduce the basic needs and characteristics of plants!
Plants make their own food, grow, change and do not move on their own. Basic needs of all plants (sunlight, water, air, and a place to grow), the life cycle of a plant and the function of different plant parts will be introduced through the bean plant..
A pdf version of an implementation guide for one of the series, Amazing Animals, can be found here. It will give you an overview of what is contained in each set. The activities around writing in each set are described below:
Mayer Johnson Curriculum Companion: Write Activities
Each of the following writing activities has a separate focus and goal, but all use a similar visual layout.
Errorless Writing: These activities guide the student through phrase choices to construct sentences. All choices are logical and relate to the content of the CC. In Sentence Building, the goal is to develop syntax skills using core words and target vocabulary.
Sentence Building: The student practices building simple two- or three-word sentences of the form Subject+Verb or Subject+Verb+Object/Descriptor. The student picks one word from each column in order to construct the sentence. In Structured Writing activities, the goal is for the student to strengthen sentence and word meaning by constructing sentences from the Word Banks.
Structured Writing: The student is given a Word Bank of 12, 20 or 32 words with optional picture supports. The Word Banks contain all the words needed to construct simple sentences. In Structured Writing activities, the goal is for the student to strengthen sentence and word meaning by constructing sentences from the Word Banks.
Free Writing: In Free Writing, the goal is for the student to express novel thoughts by combining letters to create new words and sentences, with the support of a keyboard and targeted vocabulary for the lesson. Writers of all ages and ability levels should be given opportunities to access the Free Writing supports. Practice and experimentation with letter-by-letter writing can be an important part of literacy instruction.
In addition to the activities above, the following activities focus on spelling and written and creative expression.
Fill-in-the-Blank: The student completes sentences by filling in blanks using Word Banks.
Word Scramble: The student practices spelling target words by unscrambling the letters to spell the word.
Draw a Picture: The student creates a picture by choosing a background and using a variety of stamps
A talking word processor provides auditory feedback as a student types. The word processor may be set to read any combination of each letter, word, or sentence as it is generated. Additionally, students can hear their entire work read aloud. This allows students to auditorily edit their written work and hear the organizational component. Additionally, a talking word processor may be motivating for a student who is unmotivated to write. The following options are suggested for accessing a talking word processor:
Word prediction is most frequently considered for the student with spelling difficulties but should not be overlooked for the student with mechanical difficulties. The use of word prediction software can decrease the number of keystrokes and increase quantity and efficiency; for the student with physical limitations, using fewer keystrokes to complete words and phrases will increase the quantity and quality of writing, while reducing fatigue. Word prediction software is fairly easy to use, and requires minimal instruction. Co:Writer, with or without the SOLO suite is available to try.
Word prediction and cueing use the logic of linguistics to predict the most reasonable next words to a typed beginning. The words can then be selected from a list, thus minimizing spelling effort and keystrokes. These programs work simultaneously with word processors, often functioning instead of the built-in spell checker. Consider using word prediction with text-to-speech output for students with persistent spelling difficulties or with physical impairments that limit typing.
Topic dictionaries in word prediction applicatinos allow you to front load specific vocabulary that may not typically be presented when pulled from a general dictionary. For example, if you were writing a report about Harry Potter, you could load a topic dictionary containing words like; Azkaban, auror, Dumbledore, Gryffindor, or quidditch. Likewise a Grade 5 science topic dictionary might include words like; chlorophyll, colloid, or hydrosphere.
Link to article, "Transforming Non-Writers into Writers with Word Prediction".
Abbreviation Expansion software can be used to create abbreviated forms for frequently used words or phrases for slower writers and poor spellers. For example, if a student consistently misspells "conscious" they could type "c-o-n" and space bar in its place and the word "conscious" will automatically appear on the screen. I use this feature to expand frequently used phrases or long strings of text, e.g. ACPS expands to Allegany County Public Schools and rme expands to richard.metheny@acps.k12.md.us. This feature is often included in word prediction programs such as Co:Writer, word processing programs like MS Word, and in Apple's iOS for the iPad.
Improving access to digital media is changing the type of assignments students can use to express their understanding of content. Multimedia software, including PowerPoint or SMART® Notebook software, allows a student to add pictures, videos, movement and sound to their projects; conveying information in formats other than written text. IntelliTools Classroom Suite also has a multimedia section, IntelliPics Studio,geared to quick production of information outside of a textual base.
Sound and video editing software such as Audacity for Windows, or Pinnacle Studio for iPad, are also available to edit media materials a student may want to use.
Personal publishing apps, such as Strip Designer or Pictello for iPad, allow students to use visuals to help make their point. Choosing the features that match a student’s motivation and/or abilities will help them create a project that can truly share what they know. For many students, comics or picture books can be a less intimidating and more enjoyable writing experience. Allowing students to create their own books gives them an opportunity to express themselves creatively and artistically while still engaging with plot, reading, and storytelling concepts.
Video and pod casting software can help a student express visually and verbally what they are struggling to get down on paper. Through the editing process they can organize those thoughts into a cohesive whole.
Voice recognition software is a tool that allows users to "speak into a headset and see their words appear instantly on the computer screen with varying degrees of accuracy." Voice recognition is broken down into two broad categories: the recognition of words, and the recognition of speech. Recognition of words is easier, and has been around since the 1950’s when Bell Laboratories developed a “speech recognizer” for numbers. Word recognition software is developed to recognize a specific set of words. In automated systems you are given specific choices to say because the software is built to just recognize those words with some variant. Word recognition software works pretty well with a wide number of people because it looks for specific words.
Speech recognition is built differently. Speech recognition software is designed to listen for the 44 or so phonemes that make up the English language and assemble them into the quarter million words found in a good English dictionary. The software does this by listening to the user read a specified series of sentences, knowing where to expect pauses between words and what punctuation and phonemes to expect. Because of this there are certain parameters that make for a greater chance of success. First is the ability to read the target text fluently. Secondly, it is imperative that the user has consistent and clear speech to use the program with any progress. Speech impaired users, English as a second language, and aphasic individuals will find it more frustrating than beneficial. It expects the user to speak like a newscaster. The user needs to enunciate words, speak at a standard rate, speak at a moderate volume, and speak punctuation.
The final consideration is location. I love speech recognition because, after training the software, I can talk a lot faster than I can type. I end up typing a lot, though, because I work in an office with two other people who don’t want to hear me say, “I end up typing a lot comma though comma because I work in an office with two other people who don’t want to hear me talking into the microphone period” Speech recognition is not a great classroom tool because of the distraction factor.
Most of the newer laptops and computers Allegany County Public Schools has purchased over the last several years have very usable speech recognition software from Microsoft built in. For older computers we have Dragon Naturally Speaking software.
Technology has great potential in providing access for all learners. Through the use of a variety of assistive, inclusive, or instructional technologies, students with wide ranging abilities and learning styles can access the general curriculum. When technology is appropriately integrated into the regular classroom, based on a thoughtful match of student skills and curricular tasks, students are provided with multiple means to complete their work. When considered after the curriculum media, materials, and tasks are developed it is assistive technology; when considered and integrated into the development of curriculum media, materials, and tasks it becomes universal design for learning (UDL). For additional information on matching technology, select the Consideration Process link above.
This site is designed to provide access to information and resources found in Allegany County Public Schools, not to be an exhaustive reference to the wide world of technology. By linking a reference of tools spanning the spectrum from low to high tech to common classroom needs we hope to create something that is useful and easy to navigate. By providing a way for you to contribute to the site we hope to create a tool that reflects use of practical and replicable strategies and tools that you’ve found to be of value. Select the contribute link above to submit strategies, web sites, files or other supports for addition to this site.