7 Learning Apps That Help Reading Compete in a Media-Centric Society
The study, “Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America,” is based on a survey of 1,384 parents of children up to 8 years old, and was conducted May 27-June 15, 2011. One key finding was that 52% of all children 8 years old and younger have access to mobile devices with some children spending an average of 43 minutes a day on the devices.
That statistic alone helps to explain why Angry Birds has been downloaded over 250 million times (I am sure that the number is larger since Angry Birds Star Wars was released in November).
As teachers, this poses a multi-faceted problem: schools are slow to keep up with technology and homework is competing with these digital distractions. National literacy statistics would lead us to believe that we are not winning this battle.
So, if you can’t beat em?... You guessed it. Join ‘em.
Here are seven apps, targeted to students 8 years old and younger (apps for older students coming soon to a blog near you), that will help to bridge the digital divide between the use of technology for entertainment and learning. Plus, they will just make you look like the cool teacher that you are!
Fry Words
This app helps students learn the 1,000 most frequently used words in the English language. They are broken up into lists of ten words and students have lots of options for reading and recognizing the words. They also have a flash card feature where you can customize the amount of time you want students to take to recognize each word. Lists can also be customized for each student or class. It is free and available in the iTunes store.
VocabularySpellingCity.Com
This app comes with a variety of spelling and vocabulary practice games and activities. There is even a website where teachers and/or students can enter their own spelling words. The general app is free but there is a premium membership offer which cost depends on the number of students using the app/website. This app is currently available in the Apple Store with an Android app in the works.
Grammaropolis
Grammaropolis helps students learn the parts of speech in a fun and interactive way. This is another app with a correlating website. The free version of the app (available on iTunes) contains full access to the nouns section of the content. Unlimited access cost options
Mad Libs
Once your students have mastered the parts of speech, you can use this Mad Libs app to help reinforce their knowledge
iWriteWords Lite
This fun app will help younger (2-
Bob Books
This is the interactive version of the Bob Books that everyone is so familiar with. Students have the opportunity to read the stories, spell words and play games relating to each story. The app is available in
Common Core App
Okay, this app may seem like kind of a buzz-kill after all of the fun interactive apps but it can be useful for teachers who want the Common Core Standards at their fingertips. You can access the standards by grade level making it useful for teacher planning purposes. There are also other resources on the app but I did notice that information from the Appendices is absent. This app is free and is available in the iTunes store.
These are just some apps that are available to teachers to help students solidify skills related to literacy. Parents are also always looking for apps to keep their young children occupied while waiting at the dentist, etc.
