Immersive Reader is a reading tool by Microsoft created to increase reading speed and comprehension for all learners, support students with learning differences like dyslexia with text decoding solutions, and help emerging readers build confidence. 

Immersive Reader can be found in Merge EDU apps and on the Merge EDU Dashboard.

In this guide, we’ll be discussing:

• Where Immersive Reader is found on the Merge EDU Platform
• Text Options tab
• Parts of Speech tab
• Reading Preferences tab

Follow this guide to find out how to use Immersive Reader with Merge EDU:

Where Immersive Reader is found

Merge Dashboard

1. Go to https://dashboard.mergeedu.com and sign-in to your Merge EDU account
   • Either tap the “Teaching Aids” tab to go to our list of digital teaching aid collections, then tap on the thumbnail of an object or collection to bring up the details page
   • Or tap the “Science Simulations” tab to go to our list of topic cards, then tap on the thumbnail of a topic card or activity to bring up the details page
2. Tap the reader icon to the top-right of the description to open Immersive Reader

Merge Object Viewer app

1. Launch the Object Viewer app
2. Tap on any of the object or collection thumbnails to open their page, then tap the information icon next to the object or collection name at the bottom of the page to open the object details
3. Tap the “Read” icon at the bottom of the page to open Immersive Reader

Merge Explorer app

1. Launch Merge Explorer
2. Tap on any of the thumbnails to open a topic card
3. Tap the “Read” icon at the top-right of any body of text to open Immersive Reader

Text Options tab

There are three main tabs in the Immersive Reader menu. The first is the text options tab, which adjusts how text appears in the Reader. To access this tab:

1. Open Immersive Reader, then tap the menu icon at the top-right corner of the page
2. The first tab is “Text Options”, which will allow you to:
   1. Adjust the text size
   2. Decrease or increase the spacing between lines of text
   3. Change the font of the text between Calibi, Sitka, and Comic Sans
   4. Change the theme/background color behind the text for better readability

Parts of Speech

The next tab is for parts of speech, which can highlight different words in Immersive Reader. To access this tab: 

1. Open the Immersive Reader menu, then tap the center icon at the top of the menu
2. This tab is “Parts of Speech”, which will allow you to:
• Split all words in the text into syllables
• Color the different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), so they are a different color
• Turn on the parts of speech labels, which will label all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs for easy identification 

Reading Preferences

The last tab in Immersive Reader is reading preferences, which contains the line focus tool and an automatic translator. To access this tab: 

1. Open the Immersive Reader menu, then tap the right-most icon at the top of the menu
2. This tab is “Reading Preferences”, which will allow you to:
• Turn on line focus to read the text one, three, or five lines at a time
• Turn on the Picture Dictionary, which allows readers to tap on a word and see an image corresponding to that word
• Translate the text into any one of dozens of languages supported by the translator

Note: Did you know Merge EDU has official translations for many languages? Learn how to change the language of the Merge apps here.

Now that you know how to access Microsoft’s Immersive Reader in the Merge EDU apps and Dashboard, your students will be able to use this reading tool when they use Merge EDU!