Reading Eggs

I recently stumbled onto a wonderful set of apps developed by the Reading Eggs team. Don't let the name fool you though. They have also designed apps for numeracy. 

Together with their apps, you are also able to create an account on their website, and follow each childs' progress. 

The apps are really great, and the kids in my class have thoroughly enjoyed working on them - in fact they will choose these apps instead of games!! Below is just a few of the apps that I have had the opportunity to work with:

• Eggy Phonics 1: Short vowel words

Eggy phonics allows you to create as many users as you need, which is really fantastic if you only have one tablet in your classroom. It will also show you the progress of each child, therefore allowing you to see where a child is struggling, and also giving you the opportunity to help that child. 

Once you have selected the child's name, you are taken to a screen which will have two options - words or reward game,

The words game, is a graduated level game. You start on level 1, and with the word cat. Once you have completed all 6 activities, you are then given a short reward and are moved onto the next activity. 

Activity one, is a simple match the word spoken to the correct picture, after completing this level correctly you must then spell the word - this gives you both the letter name and the letter sound. After completing these activities twice, you move onto bubble words - you have to pop the bubbles to spell the word. Your final activity is writing the word. You then earn a badge, and depending on how well you have done, you are awarded a certain amount of game time - you may use your game time straight away, or save it until you have a certain amount,

Eggy phonics begins with the -at word family and moves through the different families.

• Tap the Cat

Tap the Cat has various activities, ranging from Speak and Listen to Draw and Paint.

1.     Speak and Listen

The app will show you the word, and you then need to record yourself saying the word - great for those battling with a speech impediment.

2.     Smart Quiz

Here, you need to listen to the question and then select the correct question. This I find really useful when working on auditory perception skills. It begins with questions such as; “I can moo. Who am I?” It covers animal sounds and identification , initial sounds as well as associations and colour identification.

3.     Letters

The child must find the matching letters. This activity will help the child learn both the letter name and the letter sound.

4.     Writing

After writing the word, the child is then able to save their best attempt at writing the word.

5.     Sight Words

Take the bunny home to complete this very cute activity. Get the bunny to jump to the correct word until you have eaten the green carrot.

6.     Vocabulary

Matching the word to the picture – touch the word and then select the correct picture.

7.     Time to Rhyme

This activity begins with a good description of what rhyming words are. You are then given a sentence such as; On the house I see a ______ . To complete the sentence, you will need to choose the correct rhyming word.

8.     Draw and Paint

This is a fun activity, your child can paint 6 different pictures.

Eggy Words 250 HD

This is one of the favourites in my class. This is a variety of sight words, which appear on the screen on eggs. You need to touch the correct word. You can choose different speeds and levels. This is a great activity to help with visual tracking.

Eggy Add to 20

In this app there are various games to choose from; balloons, teddy, snowboard, sheepdog, memory and fishing. You are given a sum, and then need to choose the correct answer. With this app, the activities are all very different and require different skills. Some require you to find the answer, while others require you to work out what numbers will give you the answer.

 All of these apps are available in the South African App store as well, and are R24.99 each.

A good letter sound app and some indoor fun

The last week has been quite a fun week in class, but today I had to deal with some behaviour issues! Having dealt with all of this we decided to have some fun in the class again. And so started the mildly chaotic game of balloon tennis!
All you need is a few balloons, some paper plates and some rulers. Get the kids to decorate their paper plates - you could even turn this into a sensory activity and get them to use finger paints (also great for fine-motor)! Grab the rulers and tape them to the back of the paper plates - and you have some racquets! Now all you need are the balloons. Try and have enough balloons for each child (if your kids are old enough, get them to do some oral motor exercises by blowing up the balloons), blow them up and now you have balls! So you're ready to start, throw the balloons around and get them to hit the balloons. This is such a great activity for eye-hand coordination, as well as building that shoulder stability and strength that is so incredibly important for handwriting and fine motor dexterity!
Needless to say, the behaviour has improved from everyone! We all had a great time, and when we sat down to do some literacy work, the focus was incredible!!
So what literacy work did we successfully cover today? Well, it includes a free app!!

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Little Matchups ABC is really great! It has an option to change the settings, so you can switch off the letter names, and it will only use the letter sounds - which for us South African Teachers is really fantastic! It teaches the child to identify the capital letter and the small letter. The voice over announces each sound as you touch it, you then have to match the small letter to it's capital. It's a fun app with some interesting sounds to motivate the child, and when an incorrect answer is put in, it gives a wrong answer sound and moves the letter away from where the child has incorrectly placed it! I have given this app 3 stars, as it is free, there are no in-app purchases, however it is rather simple and will probably have a very short lifespan in your classroom! Added to this, it does not provide you with any data about how the child has done so you need to be watching to see what they get right or wrong!

Proudly South African Resources

The app rubric is still under construction, but coming along nicely! Remember, you can make your own one to assess apps! And, don't forget about google!! There are plenty of app rubrics out there!

In the mean time, I thought we could do with a list of resources. (To clarify, Ryan, the boyfriend, thought of this one!).
There are so many resources available to teachers as well as parents, but yet not many of them are South African! There are a few that I have come across, and which I have found quite useful.

The first one to look at is e-classroom.This site has a wealth of free worksheets, all aligned with the CAPS curriculum, not only are worksheets available but plenty of lesson plans and ideas for all grades, right from grade R to grade 12! Everything is organised in it's respective grade or theme and you can also search for specific items. Natalie Wood, the founder of e-classroom, has put together a selection of beautifully designed worksheets which are really great to reinforce concepts you are teaching. For me, as a teacher (and parents, you can also use this site to help clarify tricky concepts) this is definitely one of my "go to" sites!

Another site to look at is; sahomeschoolmum. She has some amazing items on South Africa, such as a money poster! Go have a look! These are all free and you can print them in your own time! There are also maths and literacy resources as well as activities you can do with your child.

The last one that I stumbled upon is edchatsa, while this site has less resources it has forums and regular discussion evenings. As I have only just discovered this site, I am still learning about it myself but it does look to be very promising!

Of course there are many many resources available on the internet now, and all you really need to do is be an avid pinterester! As a teacher this is by far one of my favourite resources to utilize when I am stuck, not only for worksheets, but for activities that are concrete enough for my kids to pick up!
For me, one of the most important parts of teaching, is having fun with your students. So find activities that are fun, release your inner child, and they will have fun and unknowingly learn!

Evaluating apps for the South African CAPS curriculum

One of the hardest parts of choosing an app is deciding if it will assist you in achieving the skill you are trying to teach. There are various resources on the internet which will tell you if an app is aligned to the common core standards or CCS in America, but hardly anything for the South African CAPS curriculum.
And so we are often left downloading apps that do not target the skill we were hoping for (although we may be able to use this app either for foundation skills or for extended work).
Because of this I have started working on a rubric which will hopefully allow us to choose apps that are better suited to our learners and the curriculum we currently employ in our schools. However, in the meantime a good bench mark to use is that of Kathy Schrock.

She has designed a rubric called the evaluation rubric for iPod/iPad apps. This rubric is quite useful in determining how appropriate an app may be for the skill you are trying to teach and therefore allowing you to make a better decision about the app you are considering. Go have a look at it here - iPad rubric

In the meantime, I would like to ask all of you for your help in the development of this rubric and ask you to let me know what you believe should be in the rubric? For me the most important aspects of an app are:

• Does it offer differentiated learning?
• How motivating is the app?
• What is the cost and does it include any in-app purchases?
• How can I adapt or customize it to my learners needs? 
• Does it provide me with a summary of my learners at the end of their session?

For me, differentiated learning and customization are incredibly important as I teach special needs students. However, due to the varying teaching methods worldwide I feel that customization is possibly one of the more important aspects anyway. So let me know what you think? I have also included a poll so please vote...

iPads and technology in the South African Classroom

Teachers in South Africa are discovering more and more about iPads, tablets and technology in their classrooms. As a special needs teacher myself I am finding technology more and more useful in my classroom. My student who cannot speak now has his augmentative and alternative communication device as well as various other apps all built into one, another student who cannot write is now able to type and thus is no longer frustrated by not being able to write. My students who learn visually (which is the majority), are picking up concepts a lot quicker now! While all of this technology has been incredible for my students, I always seem to come back to one question? Where are all the South African apps? Or the apps that we can use in South Africa?

Many of the apps that I have downloaded are fantastic, but are American, and this often means that I need to mute the app. This is particularly true for any reading or literacy apps as they have a tendency to use the letter names and not the letter sounds. In South Africa we start teaching reading using just the letter sounds (think of the word apple, we do not teach saying apple starts with A but rather apple starts with a). This has led me to a search for apps that South African teachers can use without muting them as the sounds are often half the fun for the kids. There are definitely some out there, and there are a few app developers who have developed apps for South African educators. I will be posting reviews of these apps on this blog soon!

If you would like to see any apps reviewed here, please let me know or if you are an app developer please drop me a line. I would also just like to say thank you to Paula from Big Bug Books for helping me out setting up this blog and for all of her advice!