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Study Skills and Kurzweil 3000 for Reading Disabled

Kenneth Elkind
MS Special Education,
Kurzweil Educational Systems Group,
Part of Lernout & Hauspie Speech

For students who have poor phonological and linguistic processing abilities which result in low or non-decoding skills, the reading features of the Kurzweil 3000 provide access to text that they otherwise could not decode. It is a highly successful adaptive technology aid. However, the Kurzweil 3000 is more than just a crucial aid for poor readers. Its added study skills features expand the use of this tool so that it can address a broader range of needs experienced by students with learning disabilities.

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There are a number of learning deficits which may accompany a learning disability which contribute to the need for systematic application of study skills:

• Understanding oral and written language at the semantic (word), syntactic (sentence) and discourse (paragraph) levels
• Verbal or written expression (word-finding difficulties, limited vocabulary, simplistic sentence or paragraph skills)
• Executive function skills (ability to hold in mind and manipulate multiple pieces of information)
• Sustained attention
• Underlying language processing skills (decoding, spelling, reading rate)
• Fine- motor coordination (handwriting, copying, highlighting)

The Kurzweil 3000 study skills features enable students to:

• Extract headings and turn them into pre-reading questions
• Preview new vocabulary and learn new vocabulary while reading
• Extract highlights into a new document to create notes
• Revise notes
• Answer pre-reading questions while reading
• Print study notes and flash cards

The Kurzweil 3000 enables teachers to:

• Edit and change the order of blocks of text to be read
• Insert written or voice notes into the text which students will encounter when reading
• Create study guides and questions to go along with reading
• Create study templates and pre-reading main idea lists

In addition, the multi-sensory and interactive format of the Kurzweil 3000 is helpful for holding the attention and focus of students with attention weaknesses (ADD/ADHD).

This workshop will demonstrate how the reading and study skills features of the Kurzweil 3000 can be used with a sample textbook chapter and other reading material.

Presenter:

Ken Elkind,
MS Special Education, LD Marketing Specialist for Kurzweil Educational Systems Group, Part of Lernout & Hauspie Speech
52 Third Ave., Burlington, MA 01803, (781) 203-5031,

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