A nonprofit group is aiming to help dyslexic students improve their reading skills by providing some East Aurora schools with a year of recorded textbook rentals.
The textbook rentals from Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, valued at $2,050, comes in conjunction with a $3,500 grant from a local citizens group, the Aurora East Educational Foundation.
People with dyslexia, a learning disability, have difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition and have poor spelling and decoding abilities.
In most people, the learning process is shaped in part by the brain’s ability to receive communications and transform them into the intended concepts. But those who suffer any of the varying degrees of dyslexia may need extra help efficiently routing that message to the mind.
That’s where the recorded textbooks come in.
Some students with dyslexia are able to comprehend more effectively when spoken words are heard as the individual follows along with the textbook.
“The students who use the recorded texts feel much more confident about the material read,” said Sheryl Tamberelli, a learning disabilities teacher at O’Donnell Elementary School. “The playback machines can even be adjusted slower to accommodate processing differences between some students.”
“So many of our students are bright and can learn concepts, but some of them can’t read more difficult texts independently,” said Valerie Gudgeon, director of Student Services for School District 131.
Textbooks and literature are recorded onto cassette tapes and, more recently, disks that can hold 40 hours of material. Schools or individuals may subscribe annually and are lent the recordings by mail. Proprietary playback machines may be rented or purchased.
The initial donation from RFB&D and the Aurora foundation benefited five East Aurora Unit District 131 schools. But after learning more about the program, the district decided to outfit its remaining schools also.
Using funds from a federal grant, the district spent $11,450 to buy playback equipment and RFB&D memberships for the other schools.
“This is a great example where a seemingly smallish-size grant served as a springboard to allow a district access to our program and its positive effect on many students,” said Gwen Seeley-Joosse, west suburban educational outreach director for RFB&D’s Illinois unit.
Seeley-Joosse said 57 District 131 teachers have been trained in the recorded books program that will serve up to 300 learning disabled students this year.
Because many of the dyslexic students are native Spanish speakers and are still learning English, RFB&D is trying to produce recordings in that language as well.
District 131 has an enrollment of 12,140 elementary, middle and high school students.
