Why We're Innovating for Challenged Readers
How We Began
Readeezy was developed by Maria Finaro Cleary. Maria is a school superintendent with a disabled daughter who pretty much stopped reading when she was about 11 years old. In fact, she struggled so much with books that she often said, “Reading makes my brain hurt.”
Our Audience
Readeezy is dedicated to these reluctant and challenged readers, especially those who are teens and young adults. Why? By the time they reach this age, there are few books for them to really enjoy. If they have pictures, they are often too juvenile. If they have age-appropriate stories, the vocabulary and sentence structure is sometimes difficult to understand.
Why We’re Different
Readeezy is different. It has illustrations, animations, and interactive questions to invite readers to actively participate in the story. Text to speech helps them with words that are difficult to read. And check our research in the NYAPE Journal (p. 45) to see how well it works!
What’s In Store
Our plan is to develop an entire library of books like this one. With additional features and assistance, we aim to make Readeezy a fun place to visit. And the more fun it is, the more everyone will read!
Professional Endorsements
Will spark an interest to read more.
I love the interactive platform that allows for breaks and is challenging enough to help strengthen reading comprehension. I feel the option 'I'm stuck' is very important and innovative.
I feel the option of voice over is not only well done but mainly will help strengthen one's reading/decoding abilities as he or she follows the text while listening to the story.
Overall an excellent idea to bring reading, auditory and visual experience all together for the enjoyment of interesting story telling (in the 21st century) to a person who may otherwise find it challenging.
Good job!
If they can visualize they can better comprehend and learn.
Really liked how the questions are asked throughout the story instead of at the end. The animations and questions combined help the reader understand/comprehend/remember the story
I thought the questions were higher level questions and not your basic true/false or multiple choice. There could be multiple answers and you can give a separate answer. These help with critical thinking, comprehension, and simply getting the reader to create an answer on their own instead of simply selecting something based on a guess. A lot of times a multiple choice or a true/false can question can be figured out logically (It's not A or B so it must be C) and the reader can be correct without actually understanding why that is the answer.
The visual combined with the auditory is a perfect balance.
