As a teacher who loves using iPads in my teaching, I have my favorite apps that I love using thanks to my amazing mentor from my MAT year at Trinity. I'm always learning about new ones and trying them but I definitely have my favorite go-to ones. Today I'm sharing some of my favorite and simplest apps for students to use.
Number One--Thinglink
I heard about Thinglink during my student teaching year, but never gave it a chance. For some reason, it seemed challenging to use and my mentor and I never used it in our class. Fast forward to April of my first year teaching. I was up at school on Good Friday long-term planning and thinking about our research project in May. Right before beginning this project, students would have finished book review (not a book report FYI) and they had written a lot of papers so I was looking for something that would be more fun and engaging for them. I decided that they would use the Thinglink app to make a presentation with facts, a map, pictures and a Works Cited page that they would then present to the class. I taught myself how to use it. It's so simple and perfect for presentations. After our class presentations, I uploaded the presentations to our class blog. Below is an example I made for my students.
My Sample Project
Number 2--Pic Collage
During my student teaching year, we used Pic Collage for assignments all the time. I've also used it for personal purposes. It's so simple and easy to use. As a Language Arts teacher, I had students use it to publish haikus. They loved it. I also used it to create examples for my Kahoot review games since there was a limit for how long the question could be. I'd then embed that image in my Kahoot review game. Pic Collage is easy and fun and there are so many ways to use it as a teacher and student. I also used it for my end of the year Masters presentation.
Number Three--Popplet Lite
I absolutely love Popplet Lite. There is a paid version, but the free version is perfect for classrooms. Like PicCollage, it's simple and easy to use. Students create webs with pictures and text for organizing ideas. In the lower grades, you can use it all the time. With my sixth graders, I had them use it for creating webs of the comparative and superlative adjectives form. (I was trying to branch away from worksheets) but if I had had a class set of iPads, I would have used it for graphic organizers and pre-writing or brainstorming topics. Below are some of my favorite second grade social studies projects my students did.
Number Four-- Doodle Buddy
Number Five-- Number Pieces Basic
Number Pieces is a great app for early elementary math practice with base ten blocks. Instead of using physical manipulatives, students can use this app to represent a number with hundreds squares, ten rods and ones cubes. My mentor and I used this app all the time to model representing a number since we could reflect using Apple mirroring to our projector. Students can also take a screenshot of their work. If students didn't have iPads this would be a great tool for teachers to use in small groups.
None of these apps are new, but they're simple and easy to use. Even with all of the new apps, I still love them and definitely don't intend on abandoning them. What are some of your favorite apps? What do I need to add to my classics apps for students list? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
-Elle
 |
| Some of my favorite apps for students. I call them classics for a reason. |
I heard about Thinglink during my student teaching year, but never gave it a chance. For some reason, it seemed challenging to use and my mentor and I never used it in our class. Fast forward to April of my first year teaching. I was up at school on Good Friday long-term planning and thinking about our research project in May. Right before beginning this project, students would have finished book review (not a book report FYI) and they had written a lot of papers so I was looking for something that would be more fun and engaging for them. I decided that they would use the Thinglink app to make a presentation with facts, a map, pictures and a Works Cited page that they would then present to the class. I taught myself how to use it. It's so simple and perfect for presentations. After our class presentations, I uploaded the presentations to our class blog. Below is an example I made for my students.
My Sample Project
Number 2--Pic Collage
 |
| Second grade Pic Collage on fresh and salt water |
 |
| Sixth grade Halloween haiku |
 |
| What I made to hand out for my final MAT presentation. |
Number Three--Popplet Lite
I absolutely love Popplet Lite. There is a paid version, but the free version is perfect for classrooms. Like PicCollage, it's simple and easy to use. Students create webs with pictures and text for organizing ideas. In the lower grades, you can use it all the time. With my sixth graders, I had them use it for creating webs of the comparative and superlative adjectives form. (I was trying to branch away from worksheets) but if I had had a class set of iPads, I would have used it for graphic organizers and pre-writing or brainstorming topics. Below are some of my favorite second grade social studies projects my students did.
I absolutely love Doodle Buddy. When you open Doodle Buddy, you can upload a picture from your iPad camera roll or choose one of the backgrounds. After adding the background, you can add stickers and text. You can also draw on it as well. I didn't use this app in 6th grade because I couldn't find a good way to use it, but we definitely did in second grade. One of my favorite second grade projects with it was an assignment during our fractions unit. I didn't want students to complete a worksheet, so I decided I would have students App Smash with Doodle Buddy and Skitch. I had groups of eight different objects and circled a fraction of them with the pen tool in Doodle buddy. I then saved the image for students to use.Students uploaded this image to Skitch and then typed the fraction of objects circled of each one. They then uploaded their saved file to a Dropbox folder. Now, I'd use Seesaw or Google Classroom for them to turn in work. So much more engaging then a worksheet and simple for students. I hope to use Doodle Buddy a lot more. It's so much fun for students.
Number Pieces is a great app for early elementary math practice with base ten blocks. Instead of using physical manipulatives, students can use this app to represent a number with hundreds squares, ten rods and ones cubes. My mentor and I used this app all the time to model representing a number since we could reflect using Apple mirroring to our projector. Students can also take a screenshot of their work. If students didn't have iPads this would be a great tool for teachers to use in small groups.
-Elle
Comments
Post a Comment