It is estimated that as many as 20% of preK-12th grade students have some form of Learning Differences. Homeschoolers are no different. In fact, homeschoolers may have a slightly higher incidence some form of learning difference. It is because the parents were dissatisfied with the level of individual attention their child was receiving in public school that they decided to homeschool.

Microsoft originally created Immersive Reader for dyslexic students. Since then the features have expanded to help students with ADD, Autism, Dysgraphia, and Dyscalculia learn in new ways.

Thousands of students who previously had problems reading have had their lives transformed. Check out the Digital Learning Tools page for more information, including videos from students, sharing their experience before and after Immersive Reader.

Minecraft: Education Edition* was designed to be instructional and not just a game. This game-based learning platform supports tens of thousands of educators in over 100 countries. There are several items that were added so the game is more accessible in a classroom setting. This includes items like a camera + portfolio and a chalkboard, which can come in different shapes and sizes. There are also several Chemistry-related items.

Lesson plans are available to download and are divided among certain age groups and various subjects such as history, visual arts, and gaming. Additionally, educators can upload lesson plans that they have created for others to use from the main website.

There are also coding features in this edition which can introduce coding basics, as well as support more advanced computer science functions.

* Requires the Home-Schooler Family Plan Membership or a separate Minecraft Education License ($12 per year).

In addition to Minecraft: Education Edition, another opportunity for home-schoolers to learn coding is the MakeCode platform. This is an online learn-to-code platform where learners build games, code devices, and mod Minecraft.

Any home-schooler at any skill level can code with MakeCode. Students build up their coding skills as they move from block-based coding to languages like JavaScript and Python.

Included is Beginner’s Guide to Arcade Games. Designed for students between the ages of 11 & 15, this experience contains a total of 11 tutorials (approximating 145 minutes of instruction) spread over 5 sessions. At the end of each learning path, students receive a certificate of completion.

READING COACH is a new tool in Microsoft Teams for Education that lets students practice reading out loud using personalized feedback. It includes Actionable Insights for you, to see where your child’s weaknesses and strengths are, as well as Prosody (reading with expression) and Phonics Rules Dashboards.

READING PROGRESS helps students build confidence and reading fluency. This research-based literacy tool was developed in partnership with reading experts.

A happy, but unintended, consequence of these tools is that they are causing students to read more. Because the tools work with recorded video sessions, children watch and listen to themselves. Unlike adults, they like it! They go back and read again.

Some students think faster than they can write and they get frustrated by how long it takes to go from thought to paper. One of the most efficient ways for these students is by dictating them directly to the page. That’s what Dictation, built into several Microsoft 365 for Education apps, allows them to do. Users can even enable auto-punctuation for the insertion of periods, exclamation marks and question marks based on inflection or pauses.

For more advance writing assignments, such as research papers, in just seconds, students can use the Microsoft Word application in Microsoft 365 for Education to:

• Research information right from within Word, without have to switch to a browser screen;
• Copy and paste the information from the cited work within their paper;
• And even add it as a properly formatted  cited work notation within footnotes.

Math Assistant is a great tool for the Teacher and the Student because it can:

• Take a handwritten math problem and convert it to text via OCR;
• Solve the problem;
• Show the steps (even read them back to the student word-for-word so the student can follow along);
• And even automatically create practice quizzes based on the problem.

While not an official foreign language curriculum, Immersive Reader can be used to help reinforce foreign language lessons.

Taking a text assignment, a student could:

• Use the native language version of a text (such as English);
• Convert it to a foreign language (such as Spanish);
• Visually identify the parts of speech to make them more recognizable;
• Read the text to the student so they can hear the words and follow along as the text is written;
• Use the Picture Dictionary to identify a word the student may not recognize.

Once you have your Home-Schooler.com account in place, you can take advantage of the thousands of Online Training Sessions (both Live and Recorded); Self-Paced Learning; Downloadable Lesson Plans; and much more. Some of the resources are for the Parent/Teacher, some are for the Student’s benefit (across different age groups), and some are for both – all led by Microsoft educational trainers.

The Beginner’s Guide to Arcade Games, for example, contains a total of 11 tutorials (approximating 145 minutes of instruction), spread over 5 sessions, and is designed for students between the ages of 11 and 15. This on-demand instruction can be played, paused and replayed as required for the student to learn.

Live Online Interactive Training is also available. There is usually an opportunity to ask questions and interact with the instructor(s) and take-away downloads are often available for offline learning.

Microsoft education staff partner with organizations from around the world to present remote learning opportunities for all age levels, preK – 12. Tour the museums of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; a base camp in Antarctica; the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee; and much more.

Similar to Remote Learning with Microsoft education staff, Home-schooler-led learning staff work to present theme related Virtual Field Trips, such as our popular one with Native American Nations. While not tied to any single curriculum, the learning opportunities, handouts, exercises, etc. are designed to supplement your child’s learning.

Designed with the older student in mind, Home-schooler.com staff moderate topical webinars with experts in a particular field. While curriculum topics are also discussed we hear from many different fields, such as How To Prepare for the SAT; College Application Essay Writing; online vs. on campus nursing programs; and more.