My son is not a strong reader. While he technically reads at grade level, he is a slow reader and his attentional issues make reading even less efficient for him. In order to help him with reading comprehension, I load the book my son is reading in school on my Kindle Touch and read the chapters ahead of him so we can discuss what is going on in the story and the themes in the book. I find that my son tends to do much better when he can talk out his ideas to someone who is reading the book along with him.
Recently, my son has been assigned vocabulary words to locate in the book he is reading, which he finds overwhelming. I am having him use the Kindle search feature to find the target words in the book, look up the pages they are on, and look up the meaning - all directly from the Kindle. This has made a cumbersome task much more manageable for him.
Last week, when my son had a bad cold. I allowed him to turn on the Text to Speech feature on the Kindle to have the pages read to him. As I discussed in a previous post, this is a computerized voice that reads the text in a rather clunky way, but it seems to work for my son. Unfortunately, I found out that the new Kindle, the Paperwhite, does not have this Text to Speech option. This concerned me: what will I do when my Kindle dies, which it will eventually?
Last week, when my son had a bad cold. I allowed him to turn on the Text to Speech feature on the Kindle to have the pages read to him. As I discussed in a previous post, this is a computerized voice that reads the text in a rather clunky way, but it seems to work for my son. Unfortunately, I found out that the new Kindle, the Paperwhite, does not have this Text to Speech option. This concerned me: what will I do when my Kindle dies, which it will eventually?
Not to be deterred, I searched Google to find out if I could have books read on the iPad using iPad features and the Kindle app. I went to eHow and found out that this can be achieved by turning the iPad's VoiceOver feature on (which is under "Accessibility" under "Settings" on the iPad) and then accessing the book on the Kindle app.
Obviously, another option for having books read aloud is to buy the books he is reading through Audible (a seller of downloadable audiobooks). Because I don't usually want to have to books read to him and the books and membership are fairly expensive, we are not using that option at this time, although we may in the future (I am thinking it will pay for itself when he has to read Shakespeare, The Odyssey and Beowulf…). Additionally, some books are not available on Audible, including the one he is currently reading.
Meanwhile, I am grateful every day for the Kindle and how it has helped us make reading more fun and less of a chore.
