How FrontRead can be tailored to students with reading difficulties

An important aspect of the FrontRead program is that all students can participate – regardless of whether they belong to the group that reads at, below or above age-appropriate level.

In this week’s reading tip, we focus on how it is possible to tailor the course to students with reading difficulties.

Different text packages for different readers

FrontRead is set up in such a way that it is possible to assign different text packages to students in the same class. This makes it easy for teachers to differentiate the training to suit the reading level of each student. The text packages are categorised based on LIX – a score for measuring difficulty. Students do not have access to information about which text package they have been assigned. This ensures that students who read below age-appropriate levels do not feel stigmatised or left behind. Read more about LIX here.

The open course fir student with reading difficulties

For students with reading difficulties the skimming part of the F4 assignments are too difficult to handle. To help them, a teacher might put the student on an ‘open course.’ This adds a skip button that lets the student skip the skimming part and move directly to the normal reading. It also lets the student skip other assignments that might be too difficult. We recommend that only students with severe needs are placed on an open course. You can do this by going to the administration module and select ‘edit’ next to the specific student.

Using AppWriter/IntoWords

To allow for even greater access and flexibility for students with reading difficulties it is possible to use read-aloud tools in FrontRead. In the case of AppWriter, this requires the student to work in Google Chrome. It is also possible to download the text package as a PDF so that the student can practise using the tools available for various text editors and viewers. The text packages can be downloaded by logging in to the administration module and clicking Text Browser. You can find much more information on how to integrate read-aloud tools in the Teacher’s Guide (also available in the administration module) or you can call our support on +45 2882 1500 to get the guidance you need.

Custom reading speed (words per minute)

While the options above can be mixed and matched, it is important to emphasise that it is possible for the student to manually adjust the reading speed in the reading training exercises (F4). Some students with reading challenges can, given the right text package and a sufficiently low reading speed, read the texts in the programme without other assists. The reading speed can be as low as 32 words per minute, which means that the text crawls at a very low speed across the screen.