AVERY Family and School Psychology Services

STARS Summer Sessions are back! Give your student an opportunity to reset their learning without classroom pressure. 🌞📚

Learn more: averyfsps.com/stars-literacy-program

For many students, math difficulty isn’t about understanding the concept. It’s about the extra demands of copying, spacing, and handwriting. Today we’re focusing on supports that reduce these barriers, such as prepared math sheets, typed problems, ModMath, and digital math paper.
By removing or reducing copying demands, students can focus their energy on problem-solving and reasoning. These tools also support accuracy by helping with alignment, spacing, and organization, which is especially important for multi-step problems.
Offering alternative ways to show work supports access and fairness, allowing students to demonstrate what they know without unnecessary obstacles.
These supports can be helpful for students with dysgraphia, slow or effortful handwriting, motor planning differences, or executive functioning challenges.

Math can be especially challenging when concepts feel abstract or disconnected. Today, we’re highlighting visual and manipulative-based tools like Brainingcamp, Math Learning Center Apps, Desmos, and GeoGebra that turn math into something students can see, move, and explore.
These tools support number sense, fractions, graphing, geometry, and algebra by showing how numbers and relationships work visually. Students can experiment, test ideas, and build understanding through interaction rather than memorization alone.
Visual math tools encourage exploration and reasoning, helping students develop deeper conceptual understanding and confidence with math thinking.
These resources can be great for visual learners, hands-on thinkers, and students who need to see math to understand it.

Today, we’re starting our math supports by highlighting tools that break problems into clear, manageable steps. Tools like Photomath, Microsoft Math Solver, Khan Academy, and Prodigy provide visual explanations and guided solutions that help students see how and why a problem is solved.
Rather than simply giving answers, these tools model problem-solving strategies, reinforce key concepts, and allow students to review steps as many times as needed. This supports conceptual understanding and reduces anxiety around making mistakes.
Many of these platforms also offer extra practice in a low-pressure format, helping students build confidence and persistence over time.
These supports can be great for students who may need modelled problem-solving, benefit from visual explanations, or require extra practice to solidify understanding.

Getting started is often the hardest part of writing. Today, we’re focusing on visual brainstorming and planning tools like MindMeister, Coggle, MindMup, WiseMapping, Popplet, and Inspiration Maps that help students organize ideas before writing.
These tools allow students to map out thoughts visually, making it easier to see connections between ideas, plan paragraphs, and structure essays or stories. Reducing the pressure to write in full sentences right away can help reduce overwhelm and support students who struggle with planning and executive functioning.
Visual organizers also help students hold on to ideas while deciding what comes first, what comes next, and which details belong together. This leads to clearer, more organized writing and a smoother transition from planning to drafting.
These supports can be great for students who “have the ideas but can’t get started,” feel overwhelmed by blank pages, or need structure for planning.

Welcome back to our next Writing feature in our Assistive Technology series!
Once students have their ideas down, editing can often feel overwhelming or discouraging. Today, we’re highlighting writing tools that support revision without taking over the thinking. Tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Hemingway Editor, and the editing features in Google Read&Write help students notice grammar, punctuation, and sentence clarity in a supportive, step-by-step way.
These tools reduce frustration by offering clear suggestions instead of vague feedback. Students can focus on improving one part of their writing at a time, such as sentence flow, word choice, or mechanics, rather than feeling stuck or unsure where to start. Over time, this can build awareness of writing patterns and increase confidence in the quality of their work.
Editing tools are most effective when used after ideas are expressed, helping students refine their message rather than limiting creativity upfront.
These supports can be great for, students who have strong ideas but struggle with mechanics, confidence, or independent revision.

To kick off our writing supports, we’re focusing on two high-impact tools: dictation (speech-to-text) and keyboarding. Tools like Google/Apple/Microsoft Speech-to-Text and Dragon NaturallySpeaking give students a way to get their ideas onto the page without the barrier of handwriting or fine-motor demands. When students can speak their thoughts aloud, their written output often becomes longer, clearer, and more aligned with their actual thinking.
Keyboarding practice builds efficiency and independence, helping students shift from effortful handwriting to a more accessible, sustainable method of writing. Both tools free up cognitive energy so students can focus on content, such as what they want to say, rather than the mechanics of forming letters.
Dictation and keyboarding also support reading (students can dictate responses to reading comprehension questions) and math (students can explain reasoning or type multi-step solutions without getting stuck on handwriting).
These resources can be great for: Dysgraphia, slow or effortful handwriting, expressive language support, and any student who has stronger ideas than their pencil can keep up with.

Today we’re highlighting digital tools that make reading more accessible, understandable, and visually comfortable. Extensions like BeeLine Reader, OpenDyslexic, Rewordify, Newsela, and SMMRY support students by simplifying complex text, reducing visual strain, and adjusting reading level without changing core content.
Colour-gradient lines (BeeLine) help with visual tracking, while dyslexia-friendly fonts (OpenDyslexic) could help support comfort and stamina. Tools like Rewordify can also help break down challenging vocabulary, and Newsela provides leveled versions of the same article so students can build comprehension at a pace that matches their needs. SMMRY helps students understand the bigger picture before diving deeper, which is especially helpful for note-taking, studying, and writing about what they’ve read.
These tools also carry over into writing (supporting research, summarizing, and idea generation) and math (making word problems more approachable by lowering the reading load).
These resources can be great for: students needing comprehension support, help with visual tracking, fluency practice, or accessible text options.

Accessible books and audiobooks open the door for students to engage with rich, grade-level content even when decoding is a barrier. Tools like Learning Ally, Bookshare, and Libby provide professional-quality audiobooks with human narration or high-quality text-to-speech that are often paired with synchronized text so students can listen and follow along.
These resources allow learners to access novels, textbooks, and classroom reading materials at the level where they can understand and not just the level they can currently decode. This not only builds vocabulary and background knowledge but also boosts confidence and keeps students included in classroom discussions.
Audiobooks support more than reading: they help students review complex concepts in science and math, and they offer models of fluent language that strengthen writing skills.
These resources can be great for: Students who comprehend more than they can decode, students with dyslexia, emerging readers, and anyone who benefits from listening while reading.