Submitted
A donation from EnCana Corporation has helped Wolf Creek Public Schools (WCPS) to purchase an award-winning literacy support software solution for students who struggle with reading and writing.
Read & Write Gold helps improve reading and writing skills, with features such as text to speech with highlighting, talking dictionary, phonetic spell checking, word prediction and homophone support to address key aspects of the reading and writing process.
Read & Write Gold is being used across Wolf Creek Public Schools in grades 3 to 12. Through the software agreement reached, the division is also able to provide the program free of charge to a number of Wolf Creek students for use at home, which will help to reinforce their classroom learning.
Teachers and educational assistants have high praise for Read & Write Gold and are pleased to now be able to use the program on a wider scale. “I see this program as being beneficial to all students. The many features it offers supports student learning in a variety of ways. All students should have access to this program,” said one teacher.
Another staff member commented, "When the students were typing a paragraph or story, Read & Write Gold helped them to realize how important punctuation and spelling are. I let them type their story or journal entry on their own for the rough copy, then we used Read & Write Gold to 'listen' to their rough draft and start the editing process.”
More than 120 Wolf Creek Public School staff have been trained on the use of Read & Write Gold and further training will be taking place throughout the division.