Have you ever read something and thought, “What did that mean?” So, maybe then you grabbed a dictionary to look up some of the unfamiliar words, only to be further confused. Now imagine being a student going through this. How many students just keep pushing through because they are too embarrassed to ask for assistance to help in understanding what they read? Maybe they have self-esteem issues or maybe they have some type of disability that makes reading and comprehending text hard. The good news is I have found something to help.
Rewordify (www.rewordify.com) is a free website that offers help to students in understanding complex passages of text. In simplistic terms, the students enter the complex passage and Rewordify will rephrase it into simpler terms. I decided to try this out for myself. I picked an excerpt from Homer’s Odyssey and was pleasantly surprised with how Rewordify interpreted the text (see image below). The default setting of Rewordify has the site highlight the words that have been modified. It was nice and helpful to be able to see the two passages above one another and to be able to refer back to the original passage.
Rewordify proved to me that it could help older students, but what about younger students? I decided to go onto National Geographic for Kids and pull up an article. I found one on Ocras, and again I was so pleased with the results. The younger students might need more assistance using the site, but I think it could be just as helpful for elementary students as it could be for high school and college students.
To use Rewordify all that is needed is a computer and access to the internet. Once you get to the website, you are ready to begin. On the top toolbar there is an option to modify settings, seek help, as well as a demo. The demo will walk you through how to use the site. I think that this would be a great tool in any library because a library’s main goal is to get information to our patrons mostly through reading and “we” lose readers when they can’t comprehend the text. So, it doesn’t matter the reason behind the struggle of comprehension as long as we are finding ways to help.
Everyone in the classroom can use this assistive tool. Not only does it help to make the text more understandable but it also helps in the understanding and learning of new vocabulary as well as better understanding of parts of speech. Click here to read about how Eric W., a classroom teacher, uses Rewordify. This TeachersFirst review offers great ideas about how to use Rewordify in the classroom, such as having the students guess the meaning of context clues and then using Rewordify to test their guesses. iLearnTechnlogy also has some great idea. Blogger, Avi Spector, had a great viewpoint on the limitations of Rewordify when he wrote:
I had not idea this tool even existed! I would have loved to use this tool when I was a classroom teacher! I have had to many students not understand a passage that I did not have another one that was written at a lower level. Think of the discussions that I could have had with some reading groups. I really wish that I had known of this tool before leaving the classroom. I am going to figure out a way to bring this into the library and I will definitely mention this tool to my teachers so that they can use it.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way Catherine does- I wish I knew about this when I was a classroom teacher. This tool is so beneficial for students in comprehending what they read. I do plan on sharing this tool with teachers at my school, as well as students visiting the library. Thank you for sharing your tips and suggestions, I can't wait to try it out!
ReplyDeleteI am so glad I read your blog. This sounds like such an amazing tool. I really like that students can hover over the text to see the original word. I feel like this could help students with reading difficulties get through a text while learning more vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent resource to have in the library, especially as I try to get more students using the non-fiction print materials to do research. Oftentimes, students will look past resources that have the information they need because there are too many words they do not understand, and this might help them to hang on a bit longer. It reminds me a bit of the site Newsela, where you can find the same news articles in different lexile ranges for differentiated learning. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you have introduced another tool for us to use in our profession as a library teacher. I learned about Bookshare through researching tools for adaptive technology https://www.bookshare.org/cms/ but you have to qualify for it in order to use it. This tools helps students understand passages and it is FREE.
ReplyDeleteMelissa,
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful tool for struggling readers. You are so correct when you stated "“we” lose readers when they can’t comprehend the text". I think having a reading tool like this would help students not only become better readers, but also help them understand more complex text. This would be especially useful to me when teaching my students how to understand complex text during a text dependent analysis lesson. Thanks for the great resources.