LAES Improves Fluency with Soliloquy
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3/12/2007—Lake Alfred Elementary School (LAES) in Florida has implemented Soliloquy Reading Assistant (SRA) from Soliloquy Learning to help improve reading fluency for the special needs students in its Exceptional Student Education (ESE) program.
SRA provides a one to one, guided oral reading program that uses speech recognition technology to improve fluency and vocabulary. With SRA, students read e-books into a computer using a headset and microphone. The software, which incorporates speech recognition, listens to the students and corrects mistakes on the part of the readers and speaks the word. It also makes records of sessions for review by teachers later, and it provides definitions for individual words when requested by the student.The program is being used at LAES to help ESE students with learning disabilities, autism, and emotional handicaps.
"One of my ESE students who is using Soliloquy Reading Assistant has improved his reading by one entire grade level in only a four months," said Eileen Castle, principal of LAES, in a prepared statement. "This is a very significant improvement for an ESE student."
She continued: "Reading is essential to any child's learning, but our ESE students need the most help when it comes to improving their reading skills. The Soliloquy Reading Assistant has provided the extra help we need. The students just love it, because they think it makes reading fun, which allows their motivation to develop naturally. Plus, they love technology."
Two hundred fifty students in third, fourth, and fifth grade are using SRA at LAES, including, in addition to ESE students, ESL students and poor and average performers, as a supplement to the school's reading curriculum. LAES is part of Polk County Public Schools in Florida. The elementary school serves 589 PreK-5 students.
Soliloquy Reading Assistant for grades 1-12, as well as adult remedial reading programs. More than 5,000 schools have adopted the system since its launch in 2002.
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About the author: Dave Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's educational technology online publications and electronic newsletters. He can be reached at [email protected].
Have any additional questions? Want to share your story? Want to pass along a news tip? Contact Dave Nagel, executive editor, at [email protected].