World of Animals

I am constantly getting asked questions about all these different animals from around the world; half of which I have never heard of before. I wanted to invest in the children's interests and see if I could find a World's Book World of Animals. It is very similar to an encyclopedia but all about animals. The homepage gives you a list of animals to choose from. When you pick an animal it lists out a bunch of facts about the animal anywhere from its weight to how many babies the animal can have. The fun thing about this app as well is it gives you real life pictures of the animals in its natural habitat. The app also gives you videos as well! The students can see how the animal acts in everyday life. Students

also have the option to read more on a specific animal. The read more section gives the students about a page long more in depth information about the animal. Students are also able to pick two animals and compare the facts about them. It shows the animals side by side and their information so the students can compare them. The app that I got was the free one but you can also get the one that is $4.99 which has many many more animals to choose from.
way they could learn about a lot of these animals they were asking me about. I found an app called

I have yet to use these app in the classroom. I plan on using it next week. I want to address the students questions they have because I love when they spark an interest in something. I am going to use this app during team time. I will introduce the app to the students and show them everything they can do with it. I will show some of the animals to the students and ask them how we can learn from all this information that is given to us. I want the students to use this app when they please (with a sign up sheet of course.) When the students have a question about certain animals or different facts, we can look on the app together to learn all about what they are interested in.

Grammer Express: Parts of Speech

I was informed by the students Reading teacher that my students needed to work on their parts of speech. They need to become better at identifying different parts of speech and well as knowing what happens with certain parts of speech. The reading teacher informed me of a great app to have the kids use to see how they are doing. The app is called Grammer Express: Parts of Speech. You can buy the app and pick which focus you want your students to work on. Many different forms of the app are

available in regards to grammer. The Parts of Speech one is an online quiz for the students. You pick from one of the quizzes, whether it be nouns, verbs, pronouns, etc. The app shows you a graph once you click on which one you want of how many questions were attempted, correct, and incorrect. The student goes through the questions and answers them. Once they finish, the teacher and student can go through and it gives you an overview of which questions were correct or incorrect and how long it took the student to answer each question. This is a great feature! Students can go back to the ones they got wrong and see why the answer is incorrect. It gives an explanation of every question. The app is $2.99 and I believe it is worth it for everything that comes with it.

I used this app during Team Time. This took a few days since I only have one iPad in the classroom. Each day I pulled a different student over to do one of the quizzes. I chose students that I knew were struggling with parts of speech. I chose quizzes based off what their reading teacher told me they needed the most help on. One at a time I pulled a student to the back table and explained to them what I wanted them to do. Once they finished, I emailed the results to myself so I could look over them later. Once I reviewed them, I pulled the students quiz back up and we went over it together. We discussed how much time they spent on each question and why they got certain questions wrong.

This was a great app to gauge how students are doing and as a form of assessment. It allowed me to see how students are doing and what their strengths and weaknesses are in certain aspects. I believe it helped the students greatly because we were able to sit down and discuss what went wrong with certain questions. The graph also gave the students a great visual so they could see how they were doing. While this app is a bit time consuming, I believe it is helpful for the students.

Brain Pop Jr.

I have always used Brain Pop to show videos to students as a whole class. The students always react well to the videos and enjoy watching them. I have just recently learned though that Brain Pop Jr. was available as an app. Brain Pop Jr. is a website that has tons and tons of education videos for students. It is a young girl and her friend Moby discussing and testing many topics. They make the videos fun for the students by adding in jokes and making them humorous. The website and app allow you to search endless topics and give you an overview of the video. The video also gives you stopping points where they think you should stop and talk to your students about what they are talking about thus far. The students can also answer questions after the videos in a pre-made quiz that the app and website gives you for each topic.

The students have been learning all about friction and forces and motion in science the past few weeks. Most of the students understand the concept of force and how it affects us. There are still about four or five students in the class that cannot grasp the concept and do not understand it. The other day, I decided it would be a good idea to pull those students aside during Team Time and help them better understand forces and motion. I pulled up my Brain Pop Jr. app and found a video on pushes and pulls (the two types of forces.) I decided to use Brain Pop Jr. in a small group setting. Something new that I had not tried before. The students responded very well to it and it allowed me to address specific questions they had about the topic. I stopped the video periodically to ask them question and discuss with them to gauge their understanding. I believe having them watch the video in a smaller group and actually having discussions with them greatly helped
their understanding of forces and motion.

I am definitely going to use Brain Pop Jr. again for small group. It allows me to understand exactly what the students are not comprehending and having the video allows the students to see a visual up close which allows them to understand it better.

Puzzle Land

This week we have had to have indoor recess quite a few times due to the cold weather coming in. The students have been starting to get bored of the games that are already in the classroom. I was looking through games they could play on the iPad and I came across Puzzle Land. I know how much my students love doing puzzles. Puzzle Land is an interactive puzzle set that the students can put together. Each puzzle comes with a quite animation that the students can watch. The students put the puzzle together and then they can watch the animation.

Since the students had indoor recess I tried to get creative with some of the things the students could do so they did not become rowdy. I had the students split up into stations. Each station had a different activity the students could do. I had about four students at the Puzzle Land station. The students really enjoyed being able to do the puzzles without all of the big mess puzzles tend to bring. The students continually asked if they could rotate so that everyone would be able to use the app. I tried to rotate them as much as I could! Puzzle Land was a great way to keep students entertained and work together to solve something.

Futaba

This week I have been having my students do a great deal of work in stations in math. I found an app that is going to be a part of my normal station rotation! The app is Futaba. Futaba is an interactive competitive game for students. The students can be in groups up to four. Each student is on a side of the Teachers are also able to create their own questions for the students if there is a very specific topic they are working on. The grade levels range from K-5. There is not always a question in the center, normally there is a picture and the student has to identify what it is. This app can be used for any topic in any grade. The teacher can also have the students work independently if they feel they need extra help. There is a practice mode for teams or individual students. The only downside is that it is $6.99; but it is worth it!
iPad and they have answer choices in front of them. In the middle of the iPad a question is displayed. The student must pick the correct answer. The topics are endless!

I have been working extremely hard to get my students to improve their math multiplication facts. I have been trying to find other ways to increase their multiplication facts through better ways then just having them do flash cards. Futaba was a great way for me to do this. Since my students are in small groups of about five or six I thought it would be perfect. Each student could just rotate after their turn. I used Futaba as one of the math stations. The students were in their small groups and had the competition with each other. They were answering multiplication facts. The students had to get to a certain number of points and once they got to the amount of points, they rotated so the other students in the group could play as well.

Futaba worked wonderfully as a math station. It was a much better way for students to learn their math facts without just handing them flashcards. It was extremely interactive and the students loved the friendly competition. It pushed them even harder and made them remember their multiplication facts!

ShowMe!

I have found a new app that I love using with my students! The app is called ShowMe. It is a free interactive white board that can be used for practically anything. The app allows you to record voice-overs and share them with anyone online. ShowMe allows you to drop images onto the whiteboard, easily switch between drawing and erasing, while also allowing you to pause and play easily. You can also make your videos as long or as short as you please and then share them with whoever you want. ShowMe is perfect for implementing a flipped classroom! It makes it easy to explain a wide variety of topics beyond just educational purposes.

We have been working extremely hard in math these past few weeks with the commutative, distributive, and associative properties. The students have been doing a great deal of activities with the three properties and have seemed to become very comfortable with them. We have been using multiplication with these properties.

I decided to use the ShowMe app as a form of formative assessment. I had each student come to my table one at a time and they would show me each of the three properties. I called a student to the back table and tell them to show me the associative property and give them a problem. I would start the recording and they would start solving the problem. I then had them erase the first problem and then told them to show me the commutative property and gave them a different problem. They then erased that problem and then showed me the distributive property with another problem. All of this was recorded and throughout I would ask students why they were doing certain

steps in order to gauge whether or not they understood WHY they were doing certain things. The conversation I had with each student and them working through each problem was recorded. I was able to stop the recording after each student and save it as the students name. I created a new file for each student.

Once I went through all of the students, I was able to go through all of the videos again and see how well the students understand all three properties. I can see exactly the steps they are taking and pause and rewind the videos as much as I please. I made sure I was taking notes about certain aspects that overall students may not have understood. I also made notes for specific students and what parts I need to still work on with them. The ShowMe app made the formative

assessment aspect extremely easy and the students actually loved coming to the back table and showing and explaining what they know!

Third Grade iPads

Luckily, this past week I have been able to start with my long term position in third grade. I have been in the classroom before, so fortunately I am used to the classroom routine and what they are learning. I have noticed that iPads are not regularly used in the classroom. I hoped that using the iPad that I have, would be helpful for the students and change up what the students are doing each day. This week, the students had been working on multiplication and division problems. They complete word problems and have to use strategies to solve the problem and determine if the word problem is a division or multiplication problem. In order to help the students learn their multiplication and division facts, they need to continue to practice them.

I decided to use the iPad game Mathopolis with my students. Mathopolis is a firefighter themed game that students really enjoy. There are many different levels of the game that start with basic addition and go all the way up to division. In the game, a building is on fire and in order to put the fire out you have to solve the math problems. Within the different levels, students can choose between easy, medium, and hard. The game can also be timed or not timed. The game is $0.99, but is completely worth paying for because of all the game comes with.

I split the students into small groups. One group was working with the student teacher to work through word problems together, one group was working independently to solve problems, and the other group was working with me on the iPad. We switched stations every 15 minutes so all the students would have time to get to each station. I explained the game to the students. Each student would have their own turn doing the game themselves. This would help with their math fluency and building up their math facts. We started with multiplication. I had each student do a level of multiplication, since I knew this group would handle it well. Once each student completed the multiplication levels, we moved onto the

division problems. Depending on which group I was working with, I either started with multiplication or addition. One of the groups I worked with only did the addition and subtraction problems since we still needed to work on getting those facts down.

I loved using the Mathopolis game! The students absolutely loved the firefighter theme. It is a better way to learn your math facts then just using flash cards that students become bored with. Making sure that students have their math facts down helps them complete the word problems easier. It also builds up the students fluency with the math facts. The students did a great job with this activity! Having them do it one at a time with the game, allows me to see exactly how each student is doing and what I need to help them with. This is a game I will definitely be using again.

Kindergarten iPads

This week I had been subbing in a kindergarten classroom. This was the first time I had ever done anything in a kindergarten classroom so I was very excited. Luckily, the teacher I was subbing for had a student teacher. The student teacher was the one that was fully teaching the class, so I mainly followed her instruction for what she wanted me to do with the students. The majority of the classroom time was spent in small groups, which was very nice. I spent most of the time with the students during math. This is when we spent the most time focusing on each student and how they were doing in math.

This week, the kindergarten class was learning all about different kinds of shapes; mainly 3-D. The students had been making little shape books with pictures and the names and they had also been working on matching shapes with the proper name. I was in charge of a small group where we would be using the iPads. The student teacher told me which app to have the students use. She told me to use Shapes Memory Match.

The Shapes Memory Match app had everything! you could choose from three different categories of games. You could choose from shape-shape, pictures & shapes, or just pictures. These different categories represented the different levels. When you picked which category you wanted to use, you could choose from a memory game, in which you had to flip over the cards and match them based off your memory. Or, you could choose the, show me, game where all the cards were shown to you and you had to match the cards based off what was on them.

I worked with two different small groups during their math time. I first worked with a lower group. I
brought out the iPad and decided to start off with the shape-shape game. We also did the show me category where the students just had to match the given shapes that were shown. For example, there would be six cards with different shapes on them shown. Each student would have a turn matching the same shapes together. They might be triangles, squares, rectangles, hexagons, etc. We passed the iPad around so each student would have a turn. The students flew through this level quite easily. I decided to try the memory game with them. They had to flip over the given cards and match what each shape was. We spent the majority of our time doing this. They loved it! Since they played this for a while, each student had a turn for their own game.

The second group I worked with was a higher math group. I decided to start with the pictures & shapes category first. This is where the card would show a piece of cake, and the student would have to match it with the card that showed a triangle. We did the show me game first. The students were able to see all the cards and they matched each one according to the picture and shape. We passed the iPad around so each student would have a turn. After a few minutes of this they wanted to try the memory game. We still continued with the pictures & shapes. The students struggled a bit more with remembering where the shapes were, however they did very well with this and loved the game. Each
student had their own turn playing a game.

Shapes Memory Match was such a great app for these kindergarteners. I could tell they loved the game and just wanted to keep playing it. This game allowed the students to not only recognize shapes and their names, but also recognize real objects that are in a particular shape. This gave them real-world examples of shapes that we see every day. I also loved that it helped the students build their memory as well. I would absolutely play this game with the students again!

Second Week of iPads

This past week I was substituting in a second grade classroom for a week and a half. The teacher had laid out all of the plans extremely well including guided reading. She did not want me doing anything too much with the students so that she would not fall behind. I was mainly working with students in order to improve their fluency, sight words, and vocabulary. I met with two different groups each day and followed very similar plans with each group.

I was mainly in charge of focusing with the lower reading groups in the class. I had another teacher in the classroom with me that was in charge of the higher reading groups. The teacher informed me that  she wanted me to mainly focus on building the students fluency while reading. The teacher had given me a list of iPad apps that she likes to use to help the students with fluency. The one I chose to use with my different groups was Read Me Stories.

In this app, the students were able to pick a story from the list the app gave us. The app had a great deal of different kinds of stories for the students. The students could choose if they wanted to have the story read to them and follow along with the highlighted words, or if they wanted to read the story themselves with the highlighted words. Either way, the students would be able to hear the words out loud and begin to recognize them. If the students choose to read the story on their own and they get stuck on a word, they can press the volume button and it will read that part of the story to you.

I had the students pick a story they wanted to read. I first had them read the story on their own. I had them look at the pictures and look at the highlighted words. If they ever got stuck, I asked them what would make the most sense and had them look at the pictures to aid them. After they read the story once on their own, I let them have the story be read out loud to them. This would allow the students to hear the actual story and hear the words they might have been struggling with.

The students seemed to enjoy working with this app. I believe it helped the students with word recognition and picking up their fluency when they are reading. However, I think there are better apps out there for the students to help with their fluency. The app had limited free stories that the students could choose from. If you wanted a series, you would have to pay for it. Also, I found the app a bit annoying because you had to keep pressing different buttons if you wanted it to read it out loud. Lastly, I wish that if a student was stuck on a particular word, I wish the app would let you hit that specific word instead of reading the entire page over again. However, the students seem to enjoy it and they liked being able to read the stories on their own and also have it read to them.

My First Week Using the iPad

This week, I was substituting in an EC classroom where the students were very familiar with using the iPad as a resource. I was left with plans from the teacher saying that the students greatly needed to work  on their sight words as well as their vowels. Luckily, the teacher had her iPad very well organized. The apps were separated by grade as well as by what the focus of the game was on. This made searching for the perfect app much easier.

Before I went and got the students, I searched for the perfect sight word app that would be the most beneficial for the first graders. The first game that the students played with was a free sight word game, called Play Sight Words, that let them pop the sight words that came up on the screen. The sight words were in different shapes and objects and they came floating up the screen. The more words the students popped, the more points they received. Not all of the words were sight words, some of the objects that popped up were just letters or made up words. This helped many of the students because as they were seeing and recognizing the sight words, they would also call some of the sight words out that they knew. This game allowed the students to be competitive as well as learn and recognize their most common sight words. I would definitely recommend this app!

Since the students were also working on their vowel sounds, I decided it would be a great idea to also find an app that helped students with their vowel sounds. The app I decided to use was free and was called ABC Spelling Magic-Short Vowel Words. This app showed the students a specific picture and

let the students drag the letters into box to spell the word. For example, it would show a picture of a pot and the student would have to drag the letters into the boxes underneath so the word would spell pot. It focused primarily on the short vowel sounds and put the vowel into a different color so the student would acknowledge that that letter was the vowel. The speaker also emphasized the short vowel sound, so the student would start to recognize the sound and be able to repeat it. To enhance what the students were getting out of the app, and to make sure they were recognizing the vowels, I made sure each student told me what the vowel was in the word and what the sound it made was. This allowed the game to specifically focus on vowels.

I used these apps for the numerous amounts of students I had. I was able to use these apps for students in kindergarten, first, and second grade. These apps allowed me to specify which grade I wanted to ficus on and changed the level of difficulty as we continued. The students did not want to leave me at the end of each period! The continually asked if I could come back the next day to work with them!