IBooks for Read To Self

My last post explained how I use Dropbox to share documents and books with my students.  This week I took this a step further!

IBooks has some amazing features for "Read to Self" as well as for guided reading.  (I use the Daily Five model for my Reader's Workshop.)  After teaching my students about these features, it was impressive to see them in use!

First, we had to get our book from Dropbox into iBooks.  (My last post explains how to get a book into dropbox.  Our books are from Reading A to Z!)  This screen shows our book in Dropbox. Click on the blue box with the arrow, click on "Open in", then "Open in ibooks."

Now this book will be saved in the ibooks library!  We closed these apps, and opened the Settings.
Next we turned on "Text to Speech" in our settings.  We started by clicking on "General," then "Accessibility."

 Then we clicked on "Speech."

Turn on the "Speak Selection" by sliding the white circle over to make it appear green!  After this is on, you can slide the white circle to change the speaking rate.  We also have on "Highlight Content" so that the words read aloud are highlighted.

Finally, we went back to our book in ibooks, highlighted a word by pressing down on it, let go, and LISTENED to it by clicking "Speak"!  This is a simple trick that can help all readers when they are struggling with a word independently.

After learning about this, my students took a reading comprehension assessment using the cause and effect strategies they had been learning about all week.  They used the "speak" feature for words when necessary, and no one really abused this.  It helped them with their comprehension, and they felt more confident answering the cause and effect questions.  I will NOT have them use this all of the time, but it is great to have when they need it, especially for my students struggling with fluency or students with IEP's.  If you only have a few ipads in your room, this could definitely help those students who need fluency help!