Teaching Reading with the iPad

My most exciting purchase of the year has been my iPad!  I am learning more and more about ways to use it with my students in the classroom.  It has been very motivating with all age levels.  My kindergarten students use the Phonics and ABC Apps to learn letter names, letter sounds, and blending.  My first and second graders enjoy many of the educational and memory games as well as the builder apps.  My third through fifth graders enjoy the books, board games, and word games.  I have recently enjoyed the Flipboard App.  I will post some educational Apps here and hope that some of you will add to the list.  It seems that new Apps come out every day.  I will post Math Apps in my next blog.
Word Game Apps:

• Text Twist
• Word Seek (very addictive)
• Word Solitaire (even more addictive)
• Boggle
• Solitaire

Just for Fun:

• Glow Doodle
• Whiteboard Lite:  Collaborative Drawing:  FREE- This is literally a white board.
• Quick Voice FREE- Records any voice recording.  Great for capturing students reading or lectures for older students.
• Dragon Dictation:  FREE - A voice recognition application puts voice to text for email messages.
• Plain Text - Saves the dictation so it can be added to a word document.
• Drop Box:  FREE - Will take the plain documents from one device and transfer to another.  Is compatible with a PC.  (I REALLY LOVE THIS ONE!)
• Tap to Talk - FREE - Turns device into an augmentative communication device using over 2000 pictures.  Can incorporate personal pictures or voice.
• Guess ' em FREE - This app is similar to the game Guess Who.  Great for Language skills  practice in questioning.
• Dictionary.com - Dictionary and Thesaurus - FREE - Allows students to access dictionary.com through an App without the need for internet access.
• FREE French Tutor - Offers a native speaker for all audio instruction.  Incorporates puzzles and quizzes into the language learning. 
• FREE Spanish Tutor:  same as above but for Spanish
• GigBaby - FREE- Offers four track recorder, metronome, set list manager and drum machine
• gWhiz Mobile - Allows users to participate in mobile assessments and audience polling.
• HearPlanet - Serves as an audio guide to landmarks and historic sites...ect...
• Quotations - 23,000 quotes over 7,000 authors.

 Try These:

• Kid Apps:  13 in 1
• Read Me Stories - Children's Books - Presents a new talking story every day.
• ABC Phonics Animas Free Lite -Talking and Spelling
• Phonics Made Easy Flash Action - Students are able to practice phonics skills, such as beginning and ending letter sounds, vowel sounds, and rhyming.
• Letters A-Z- Students learn letter names and sounds through pictures, audio and short animations for each letter.
• Analogy - Students practice problem solving skills, creativity, and analytical thinking through analogies.
• iSpell Word - Students listen to pronunciation of letter sounds and whole words, allowing them to learn over 100 simple English words.
• Miss Spell's Class - Students check their spelling skills at dictionary.com by determining whether or not commonly misspelled words are presented as correct or incorrect.
• Alphabet Flashcard Kids games
• Letter Lab:  Students trace letters of the alphabet and sare then shown pictures of real objects that correlate with the letter.  Has audio to give picture name and sound of the letter.
• Smart Kids Fun Educational Learning Games for Kids
• Word Magic:  Students are given a picture and spoken word.  Students choose what letter sound is missing.
• Sight Words:  Students are given a sight word.  They can record their voices saying the word.  Students can also touch the screen to have the word read to them.
• Super Why - Students play interactive games while working on alphabet, writing, rhyming, reading, and spelling.

Mobile Education Store:  Builders

• Language Builder - Helps students improve their ability to form sentences when given a picture prompt.  Students recored their own voice.
• Sentence Builder - Students will scroll through choice of words to build a sentence to describe a picture prompt.
• Question Builder - Students are shown a picture and are asked to choose the correct answer to a question about it.
• Story Builder - Students are given a picture and asked a question and need to complete the answer.

Board/ Card Games:

• Simon Says (memory...hard for me!)
• Uno

 App of the Year:

• Flipboard