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Story

Digital Books for Beginning Readers

These accessible books have predictable text and image descriptions - perfect for emerging readers!

Beginning print and braille readers benefit from reading books with predictable text or repetitive text. A book with predictable text contains repetitive phrases that appear throughout the book. Teachers and parents read aloud books with predictable text, modeling the reading process. Books with predictable text often have repetitive word patterns and simple story lines.

Many traditional stories, popular children’s books, and reading programs include predictable text. One way to provide beginning readers access to predictable text is adapting print books into accessible digital books, such as Apple Books. Teachers can also create predictable books that include sight words/contractions students are learning to read. If you have a student with a visual impairment who is a reluctant reader, he/she may be motivated to read digital accessible books using a mobile device, such an iPad, a braille display paired with a iOS device or computer, or with an Epub reader for a Windows computer/laptop. 

Over the years, I have created many books for beginning readers who are students with visual impairments. The book Things that Go is a book with predictable text. I created this book for a student with deafblindness who was learning about “Things that Go” in her kindergarten classroom. The student would attend to the book on her iPad while it was read aloud in sign language. The teacher pointed to words either before or after signing the sentence on each page. My present student will be able to use this book because the words a, can, and go are all kindergarten sight words. 

I also created the book My Baby Doll for a student with deafblindness who was interested in caring for baby dolls. The book was created based on student interest. After creating the book using objects from the story box, it was printed out. The student would visually attend to the story being signed, then the pictures, and imitate the actions in the pictures with the objects in her story box. A digital version was created for her to independently look at using her iPad. The original version of the book did not include audio or alt text because of the severity of the student’s hearing loss.  I updated this book for my present kindergarten student because she likes engaging in pretend play her classroom. The student can practice reading taught sight words such as I, my, and a while accessing this book with her iPad using either her visual, auditory, or tactual sensory channel. 

Attached are ePub versions of these books for beginning readers. 

Things that Go iBook available here.

My Baby Doll iBook available here.

 

Attached File(s)

https://www.perkins.org/wp-content/uploads/elearning-media/Things%20that%20Go.epub https://www.perkins.org/wp-content/uploads/elearning-media/My%20Baby%20Doll.epub
By R Saladino

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