Best Ipad Apps

 to use in the Elementary Classroom

Last school year, as a pinnacle leader in my county, I had the

 opportunity to have 20 Ipads in my classroom. My students loved

using them daily in stations and to actually create technology

products. Yes 6 year olds can create tech products on their own!

Not only can they create products but they can teach you a thing

or two while they are at it

Best Advice

My best piece of advice is to choose 2 to 3 apps that you can

easily use throughout all curriculum areas and that students,

 can use independently (after modeling of course).

Teachers often ask when and how do I make time for these tech moments. I don’t like to try to cram anything extra into my already jam packed day. So for me it has to be purposeful and meaningful and not anything extra. So when I planned to digitally publish my students writing

by using Chatterpix, I allowed time during my Writer’s Workshop

for students to work on this. Another tech project required students to use Skitch to label and identify plant parts, so during or STEM time students uploaded a picture of a plant and labeled the parts. These technology projects make great assessment pieces also, almost like killing two birds with one stone.

Must have Apps

Chatterpix is a free must have app, that can turn any picture into

a talking picture. Students take a picture and save to camera roll.

Chatterpix will access the camera roll and allow students to upload

their picture. They simply swipe across to make a mouth on their

picture. Next students press the record button to animate their

picture. Students used Chatterpix to digitally publish their writing.

After reading Spookley the Square Pumpkin students created their

own Spookley’s and wrote about how to be a nice friend. To work

on reading fluency, students practiced reading their writing to a

partner so they would be ready to record their writing. Students used

an Ipad to take a picture of their Spookley and save to the camera

Roll. Chatterpix is great to use across all subject areas. Students can

snap a picture of anything you are studying and then record facts,

read their writing, or tell all about themselves.

Click below to check out our Spookleys

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_QrXmsibl0SS0lQQnk5Ul96SUk/view?usp=sharing

Skitch is another free app. Students can label and describe

anything using just one or two words. This is what makes

Skitch such a great app for young learners. During our plant unit

students would take pictures of plants in non fiction books we were

using as read alouds. Students saved the pictures to the camera roll

then opened the Skitch app and uploaded the picture. As an assessment, students labeled the parts of a plant. This app does need

a bit more modeling to show students how to draw the arrows and

bring up the side menu options, such as text boxes and frames. Skitch is also great for math, students can use manipulatives to represent different sums. Take a picture and use Skitch to show the parts or write the number sentence.

Popplet lite is the third must have app. For primary students. Popplet is a mapping and graphic organizing tool. It is great for students who need a visual representation. Students can insert their own words, images and drawings to describe or tell about almost any subject from science to math. I used Popplet in just about all areas. Students can use this app in Guided Reading to retell a story using beginning, middle and end.. In Science students can upload pictures of the phases of the moon and label each phase. During work on words, my students used Popplet to practice their spelling pattern for the week. Students would put the pattern in the middle and then make words with the pattern in the other boxes.  

As I discussed at the beginning, I used lots of other apps during the year and will try to blog about those at a later time., but in order to make it more manageable these are the 3 that I really concentrated on using. These 3 apps are user friendly (and teacher friendly) and can be used across all subject areas. I would love to hear how others have used these apps or any other apps that you think are the best