Appy Friday Readers!
Guess what?! I have both links and reviews today! Sorry I haven’t been posting lately. I have had a lot on my plate lately and I couldn’t squeeze one more thing in. I've noticed a trend that free apps have been slim in general this school year, so I hope you at least find a few things you can use with your students/children.
Have a great weekend and happy downloading,
Betsy
REVIEWS:
EARLY CHILDHOOD/KINDERGARTEN:
Normally $0.99
This is a series of cute electronic storybook with imbedded vocabulary activities (each link is a separate app). Like most interactive books, you listen to the page of the book. What’s different is on each page of the book, items are interactive. For example, you tap on a pen and a speech bubble and audio will label the item as a pen. When you tap on the character on the page and it will ask you to find something on the page (where is my map?). You tap on the item on the screen and you collect its associated card. When you are done with the book, it has a quiz for you to receptively identify all the items in the story. It sort of takes data (star system like you are playing Cut the Rope), but as the teacher you would have to just take a screen shot. I didn’t see an option for reports. In addition to General Education, ELL (English Language Learners) teachers, Special Education Teachers and SLPs, Occupational Therapists could use this app for students to work on finger isolation and visual perceptual skills.
ELEMENTARY:
Normally $4.99
Also free on Google Play and Amazon, see Android section for links
If you don’t mind British voices teaching your learner phonics, this app is great for practicing (or practising as the Brits spell it!) letter sounds. It starts with receptive identification of the ‘a’ sound, and then moves quickly into applying the sound in the middle of a word (medial sound). This means the app is not one to use in isolation, but to work on skills your student/child has already received instruction. It’s device agnostic, meaning it works on Android, iOS and also on the web. However, the website does not have all of the activities. There is a premium version for schools, which has data reports available and multiple users.
MIDDLE-HIGH
Normally $0.99
This is a picture based way of counting down dates. It was designed to track how many days until you have until an event like your wedding, spring break, last day of school, etc. What I like about it and how it might help in a school setting, is you can pick your own pictures. So if you have a photo of a paper describing a big writing project you need to do, but it’s not due next week, you could give you a count down on how many days left to work on it with your visual to help you remember what it is you have to do. You can record audio with it to give even more support. Once you add the item, it lists it by date. I think this is good for students who are good about writing down homework, but struggle with figuring out what to work on first. You also have the ability to share it to other apps (Notes, Google Drive).
ALWAYS FREE, ALWAYS AWESOME
RowCol is an early childhood/kindergarten matching game that is in a matrix formation for teachers working on basic preschool skills and for Occupational Therapists working on visual perceptual skills and finger isolation. The app consists of matching colors, shapes, visual combinations of colors and shapes, and numbers. What I like about it is it has five levels of difficulty so your student can use the app for awhile. Additionally, I like that it gives cards that don’t belong on the matrix at all, so it is not errorless. It is very hard to figure out what a student knows in many of these early childhood apps when they can’t make a mistake. It does give immediate feedback with an emoji for correct and X for wrong. What I don’t like is you can’t pick the items in each of the levels and you can’t turn off the sounds. I have some students who like the sound for the wrong answer and would not progress in the app because of that, so I would have to turn all the sounds off for that student. Also it doesn’t give data reports for you.
Free today!
EARLY CHILDHOOD/KINDERGARTEN
Normally $0.99
Normally $0.99
Also free on Google Play, see Android section for link
LANGUAGE ARTS/ENGLISH
Normally $2.99
Normally $0.99
Grammar
SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES/HISTORY
Normally $0.99
Normally $0.99
TASK-RELATED
Normally $1.99
Normally $1.99
Normally $0.99
MATH
Normally $0.99
TEACHER TOOLS
Normally $0.99
Normally $1.99
*Also free on Google Play, see Android section for link
Normally $0.99
ANDROID
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Read with Fonics
Preschool Kindergarten Quest
