Differentiated Reading Instruction

This practical guide brings together evidence-based principles for differentiated reading instruction and user-friendly tech tools, to help middle level students grow as readers in fun, interactive, and engaging ways.

Jules Csillag is a licensed speech-language pathologist, learning specialist, and a teacher of students with speech and language disabilities. She has presented at conferences such as ISTE, LDA, ILA, ASHA, and the Everyone Reading Conference.

Meet the Author Introduction: What is Reading, and How Can I Help? What is reading? From Decoding to Higher Level Thinking, and Everything in Between Language Comprehension and Reading Comprehension Reading and the Brain Teachers' Changing Roles How Technology and Reading are an Ideal Match How to Use this Book A Note about the Technology in this Book Chapter 1: What Do You Mean by "Differentiation"? Long Ago and Far Away, the Greeks Warned Us Differentiation vs Tracking Types of Differentiation Differentiation by Interest Differentiation by "Learning Style" Differentiation by Readiness Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiation: Two Sides of the Same Coin Differentiation by UDL Categories Group Names, Group Members, and Group Selection Differentiation and the Law Frameworks for Differentiation Reflection Chapter 2: What Do Your Students Know? Formative Assessments for Differentiation Growth Mindset How it Works and How Technology can Help Formative Assessment via Forms & Quizzes Google Forms and Sheets Other Options for Collecting Formative Assessments via Forms & Quizzes (LMS & more) Formative Assessment via Audio and Video Recordings Create a Screen recording, Voice recording, and/or Video recording Formative Assessment via Sorting Activities Reflection Chapter 3: What Does This Say? Differentiating for Decoding and Reading Fluency Why Decoding and Fluency Matter What to Expect: Typical Decoding and Fluency Development With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility How Technology Can Help (and How it Can't) Text-to-Speech Tools Built-in Tools Text-to-Speech Tools with Additional Features Turning Images into Text: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Podcasts for Some, or Podcasts for All eBooks & Audiobooks Closed Captioning for Videos Providing Audio Instructions and Feedback for Students Student-Generated Voice and Audio Recordings to Enhance Fluency Reflection Chapter 4: What Does This Mean? Part 1: Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction Two approaches to Instruction: Direct and Contextual Tools for Direct Instruction Tools for Contextual Instruction Tools that can be used for either approach (& how) Reflection Chapter 5: What Does This Mean? Part 2: Differentiating During the Research Process and Reading Nonfiction Why Reading Nonfiction Matters What Reading Nonfiction Entails Digital Literacy Videos Creating a YouTube Playlist Creating Custom Search Engines Annotation Tools Using DocentEDU Annotating Multiple Sources Differentiated Complexity Summaries Reflection Chapter 6: What Does This Mean? Part 3: Differentiating During Fiction Reading Why Fiction Matters What Reading Fiction Entails Visualization Tools Explicit Text Structure Instruction & Inferences Interactive Units Exemplars of Interactive Units Make Your Own! Summaries Reflection Chapter 7: Can You Tell Me About It? Differentiating Writing (to Help Reading Comprehension) Why Writing Matters for Reading What Writing (to Read) Entails Speech-to-Text Built-in Tools Other Dictation Software Word Prediction Scaffolds: Cloze Tasks, Mnemonics, and Questions Reflection Chapter 8: How Much Do You Know? Differentiating Summative Assessments Putting it all Together Quiz-creation (Review) Slideshow creation tools (Review & Some New Ideas) Rubrics Infographic Generators Reflection