Literacy Apps

Alice Brown Teachers say:

Alice Brown teachers met on Oct. 5th to share and play with several apps for their i-pads. Below are some of the apps they found useful.

Evernote

Evernote is a great teacher tool. It can be accessed from both i-pad and computer so you can record notes and be able to use them on any computer or technology device you happen to be on. You can use it as an assessment tool by setting up a notebook for each student in your class. You can record them reading, take pictures of their work and makes notes. It is all stored on Evernote and ready to use come report card time. There is a free version that works very well so there is no need to purchase anything.
For more details, please visit http://evernote.com

Skitch

Skitch is a drawing app that you can use with evernote. What the student is working on here can be transferred to their notebook in Evernote. It also has the ability to take pictures and then have the students work with the picture buy adding text, etc. _http://skitch.com/

Puppet Pals

Puppet pals is an app that allows students to create stories by manipulating the backgrounds and characters to tell the story. It will record their voice so the story can be shared with others.

Check out http://www.techchef4u.com/ for more great ideas

i-pads for Reading the Room during Literacy Centres

Amanda Slade at Lynn Fripps has her students walk around the classroom taking pictures on the i-pad of words displayed around the room. When they have taken several pictures, they then sit down and scroll through reading the words. They can share these words with a partner as well.

Printing App

Tanya Ponting uses this app to practice tracing letters with instant reinforcement for doing it the correct way. The letters traced spell a 3 letter word of which a picture appears. The letters fall down and the student then needs to trash the letters in the right order of the word. Good for K or early Grade 1.

Educreation: A Free App

Mrs. Garrod's Grade 2/3 class at R.C. Garnett used this free app on their iPads to work on inquiry. They came up with questions for Santa and used Educreation to draw, import pictures from the internet or take their own pictures to create a "slide show" type presentation with their questions for Santa. This app has a few similarities to Kidpix where students can easily draw and type onto the screen as seen in the sample to the left. They can bring in pictures from the internet quickly and take their own pictures, then add details of their own to personalize their work. Be careful though, students must record sound on every page of their project in order for it to be saved. Mrs. Garrett's class learned the hard way! You can see more examples of how teachers are using this app and download it at:
http://www.educreations.com/

Writing made easy

Here is a free app that can be used for those students who have difficulties putting pen to paper. They can record their thoughts or story on this app and it will type out what the student is saying. Once completed, the student can edit right on the app or email to themselves and copy and paste into a word document. It can then be edited and printed off if required. There is also a Dragon Search that allows a student to talk into the microphone the topic they want to google and up will come the search. Great way to support those in our classrooms who are reluctant writers!

Literacy Inquiry at West Langley

Riki O'Bryne's class was involved in an inquiry using a wordless book. They started with a gallery walk looking at the pictures from the book and thought about questions they had. They then recorded their questions and thought of possible answers. The students were involved in "hot seat" where they answered questions in the roll of one of the characters. Then the writing began. Students had a choice of retelling what was going on in the story or retelling the story as a newscast using the i-pad to capture it. View this delightful clip to see the steps the students at West Langley went through to complete their Literacy Inquiry.

Thanks to Victoria Olson from West Langley for finding this app. It is a free and does running records, although I believe there is a paid version as well which,of course, gives you more options. The free addition allows 10 running records a month. Your student reads the book chosen from the app and it will do a running record for you. You have to wait for the results. It took a day to get them when I tried it. This is not a substitute for the teacher doing a running record with a student because you get much valuable information from sitting with your student and listening, but sometimes you just want to do a quick check-in.

On Track

This app is for parents who want to know if their child is where they should be in reading. It costs $9.99 and shows samples of readers at each of the stages through the primary grades. It gives suggestions of what parents can do with their child during each of these stages as well as provide a list of good books to read. It is offered by Heinemann.

Practicing Oral Reading

This free app will allow your students to record themselves reading, play it back and listen to themselves.
http://appshopper.com/utilities/easy-record

Book Creator
This is a free app that students can use easily. They can take pictures or add pictures to a page and type or record what they want o say. Great app to use for taking pictures of book pages and then record reading of student. Thanks to Victoria Woelders for showing me this app and allowing me to learn along with the students.