Presented by: Jennifer Topple, MS, CCC/SLP and Kim Papastavridis, CCC/SLP
Students who struggle to read are impacted by the time and effort decoding takes away from understanding. Students deserve to learn at the level of their intellect, not at their level of decoding. Through the use of text-to-speech software (TTS), students are exposed to higher levels of vocabulary and sentence structure than they would be when reading without support.
Students who use TTS will decode independently as soon as they are able, and improvement in independent decoding can also result from using TTS. The use of TTS may continue to benefit the student in accuracy and efficiency, even after independent decoding skills are mastered.
Fears that TTS prevents learning to read are unfounded. Because reading is based on oral language, it is important for students to be challenged at the highest level of auditory comprehension while simultaneously seeing the corresponding language in print.
About the Speakers:
Jennifer Topple, MS, CCC/SLP is the Director of Assistive and Instructional Technology at The Howard School, a K-12 school for students with language-based learning differences. She has been a speech-language pathologist in both hospital and school settings for over seventeen years, with a focus on language-learning disabilities and assistive technology. Jennifer has presented and held workshops on the topic of assistive technology both locally and internationally, and she currently serves as the Chair of the International Dyslexia Association Board. She holds a M.S. in Speech and Hearing Sciences and a B.A. in Public Relations.
Kim Papastavridis is a speech-language pathologist and foreign language educator who is the Director of Language and Literacy at The Howard School. She has presented locally and nationally on the topics of vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, and foreign language teaching. She holds degrees from Purdue University and Georgia State University, and has previously worked as a speech-language pathologist, Spanish teacher, and high school principal.
This webinar will be recorded and available to view on IDA-UMB's website after the event. If you register, you will be notified when the recording is available.