Accessibility at your fingertips, May 21, 2012

By a reviewer from Maine

Version: SOLO 6. Product Setting: Resource room, classroom, home, self-contained classroom, computer lab. Skill Development: Improve writing, reading, spelling, organizational skills for a variety of students with unique learning challenges.

I have witnessed amazing experiences with using the SOLO Literacy Suite. When we first started, we were implementing on a case-by case basis, using SOLO as a part of AT evals for students who struggled with writing. The combination of CO:Writer and Write:OutLoud created some amazing opportunities for students to express themselves and become more confident in their reading and writing. I have users across grades 3-12 that use these tools, and they are remarkably adept at using them. Having Read:OutLoud available for students with bookshare.org accounts affords teachers the ability to have accessible content at their fingertips.

Since we have a site license, we install this solution on any machine. There are students that may not be identified as requiring Special Education services, but may benefit from these tools.  Going in and teaching lessons on how to use Co:Writer as a writing tool amazes all students, and they are eager to try it and use it for long term writing should they need it. It's all about the right tool for the task, and SOLO Literacy Suite has opened up a whole new world for our students.

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Quote From Student on SOLO, August 30, 2010

By Kelly Key, Illinois

Version: SOLO 6. Product Setting: Gen ed classroom and resource room. Skill Development: Improve writing outcomes and organization for a student who's verbal skills do not match their writing skills. This student also has very poor spelling and handwriting.

I wanted to share an exact quote from this student (he shared this during an AT Consult that I conducted with him and his team in 5th grade last year)...

"Before, I would type on Word and have 50,000 errors. I would have to re-type it, fill in things, and it would be a pain and take like two days to write. When I use SOLO, it still takes me a little time, but I'm REALLY accurate!"

 

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SOLO Review, May 13, 2010

By reviewer from Texas

Version: SOLO. Product Setting: Resource setting-elementary school. Skill Development: Improve writing outcomes, improve communication skills, facilitate writing for student with physical disability.

Over the past few years I have used SOLO with a variety of students in grades K-5.  One LD student this year increased his average sentence length from 6 words to 13 words. This year I also had one kindergarten student increase his writing from one sentence containing 3 words, to 57 words in 8 sentences. Many of the students that have used the program have made enough progress in their writing abilities that they progress to the point that they no longer need to utilize word prediction and text-to-speech support for their writing.  

 

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Jennifer's SOLO Experience, May 7, 2010

By Jennifer Pressly, Texas

Version: SOLO. Product Setting: General education and co-teaching classroom. Skill Development: Writing.

Using Co:Writer helped my students communicate effectively. 

 

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Tara's SOLO Review, May 7, 2010

By Tara Silvers, Texas

Version: SOLO. Product Setting: Reading Lab Classroom - Grades 6,7,8. Skill Development: Target: Improve decoding skills of struggling readers.

My students were really excited about using solo suite. This product has improved my students reading skills and made them more confident in their writing.

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Motivation for Writing, March 11, 2010

By Kris Reynolds, Texas

Version: SOLO. Product Setting: English Lab class in middle school for students who are in special education. Skill Development: Target:  vocabulary development sentence expansion parts of speech.

My class is a Co-Teacher classroom with middle school special education students who are reading and writing a minimum of three years below their current grade level. They are very resistant to writing independently. I take two separate groups (a maximum of 7 students at a time) into the computer lab a minimum of once a week to use SOLO (Read:Outloud, Co:Writer, Write:OutLoud, and Draft:Builder). Initially, when starting this product, my students were not used to using a word prediction software. They had difficulty using Co:Writer. They did not understand the concept and almost exclusively ignored the program. Once they realized that it would predict for them, and they then had several words to choose from, it gave them a freedom to express their ideas in written form.

 

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Hope, September 2, 2009

By Reviewer from Washington

Version: SOLO. Product Setting: Resource Room. Skill Development: Improve reading outcomes for student with dyslexia.

One of the students in my class has tremendous difficulty reading. He is patient, well behaved, wants to learn, but gets frustrated with himself when he can't read to acquire information. We were able to connect him to the internet images and use SOLO to read some of the material to him. First we chose "cars", one of his favorite topics. Although he needs assistance, SOLO allows him some independence in getting feedback about what he views.  From this experience, I saw a spark in him that I have not seen for awhile. As the year starts up again, I will quickly hook him back up to the program. He is creative and will find ways to utilize the software that I am only beginning to understand.

 

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Super Writing Tools, June 2, 2009

By Leslie Walker, Washington

Version: SOLO. Product Setting: This product is used in a Life Skills classroom. Skill Development: This product allows my "non-writers" to become writers using the maximum level of supports and my writers to become fluent writers with the spelling support.

This product takes my students from can't do to can do. They are excited about writing now. We have paired the writing with keyboarding lessons and now everyone is keyboarding their lessons.

 

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WE WANT SOLO!, May 28, 2009

By Reviewer from Illinois

Version: SOLO. Product Setting: We have tried this product in several buildings and had presentations for principals and special education program coordinators. Several of the secondary buildings have written proposals for using the SOLO in their computer labs for ALL the students, not only students with IEPs. Public school setting.

Skill Development: Writing skills... organization and organizers for 3 and 5 paragraph themes.

This product has been used for training students for practice on the writing prompt for state assessments!