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!