Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Apple Education Summit on the Gold Coast as part of the ADE 2026 class. In my role as Primary Teacher and Literacy Specialist I was really inspired with the discussions and sharing around supporting students through using a variety of accessibility tools.
Next term, I will be teaching a group of around 20 students who are at Tier 2 and 3 level ( mostly at least 2 years behind their peers) and supporting their parents with ideas for reading and writing at home. Our school is also getting a cohort of International Students for 4 to 6 weeks ranging in age from 6 years old to 12 years old. Our Pod will have 3, 6 year old Chinese students during this time.
The challenge was to create a resource that would support and grow Literacy learning for:
-My Tier 2 and 3 students, including ESOL and those with a variety of learning needs such as, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD and Autism.
-The International Students and their respective age group teachers.
-Learning Assistants who support these students.
-Parents and whānau (families) of all of these students.
This resource can also be utilised for any student developing their fluency, oral language and/or handwriting.
For the ESOL and International Students the camera can be used to take a text image from a PDF or book:
At this stage a lot can be done, but I opted for the translate option for my ESOL and International Students. From here you can see and listen to the text from the story in English and your chosen other language. This process helps students learning English to have a deeper understanding of the vocabulary, as well as being exposed to fluency and prosody at a natural pace when listening to both texts. After this process the text can be transferred into the Freeform Template and practice and self assessment can commence. Voice Memos play an integral role at this stage too.The Bilingual Freeform example is designed to be collaborative with a buddy in class during the student's visit, so they can be supported through the process.
The second Freeform PDF example is for the Tier 2 and 3 students. They will take similar steps, but also write 1 to 2 sentences with their neatest handwriting as a retell of part of the story to turn into text with the camera. Automaticity for handwriting is a significant barrier for most of these students, so the focus on this and their fluency while reading will help build confidence, and provide a living record of their improvements. Their template will also be personalised with goals from the new, New Zealand Curriculum. I will then select a relevant free to use PDF text and audio to match our books each week from TKI, to provide an exemplar with excellent narration.
This Freeform learning will provide excellent feedback and goal driven learning for students. Parents will get to be part of the learning process to support their child at home and teachers can use the data for helping students to work towards their goals and to help their report writing and parent conference preparation. I'd love to see how other teachers are approaching making Literacy accessibility for their students!
Attach up to 5 files which will be available for other members to download.