Our iPads arrived in January, and our students were thrilled. Laurie and Crystal each received three and we gave two to the other fifth grade classroom.
Our initial proposal was to use the iPads with the Listening to Reading portion of the Daily Five model in conjunction with online resources and applications. We were looking for a resource that provided a wide variety of texts, especially nonfiction, that would also read the text to students. As part of our grant, we requested application licenses for Tales2Go. We have found that while Tales2Go has the variety we were looking for, it does not meet our needs: the program reads text to students but does not provide visual text for the students to read along. This is a component that is very important to our reading program, and Tales2Go isn't going to work. We opted to not purchase the licenses, have "banked" those funds, and are currently looking at other options.
While we are on the hunt for the perfect application for our Listen to Reading stations, we are finding many other ways to use our iPads:
- MyOn free online texts
- Math facts practice: Xtra Math icon added to iPads; Sushi Monster
- Grammar practice: (most of these that we have tried are not very good)
- Camera and Video use
- Research: Daily Science, social studies maps and eminent persons research paper and speech; math conversions,
- EasyCBM: students absent when we test in the lab can easily make up missed tests in the classroom
- Fun! Our students love their iPads. Many of our students do not have access to this type of technology at home, and the before this grant, had very limited access here at school.
We are excited to continue to fumble our way through this process :).
Crystal and Laurie
