Sunday, June 23, 2013

Core Curriculum Conference Notes

Region 7 ESC Core Curriculum Conference
Keep Calm and Teach on
June 24, 2014


Below is an extended list of the Apps we discussed in the session entitled BYOD in the ELAR classroom. These apps can be used for reinforcing reading skills, writing skills, and TELPAS skills.

Apps for ELAR Skills: Reading

Apps and Programs for Vocabulary


Quizlet (Free app and website) Quizlet allows students and teachers to create vocabulary lists that students can learn and study in several modes: flashcard mode, learn mode, and scatter game mode. The words and definitions can be read aloud in learn and flashcard mode. Tests and quizzes can also be generated and printed on the website.

Dictionary.com- (Free) This app works offline. A student can look up definitions, synonyms, and word origins. Students can also listen to the audio pronunciation of the word. This app also has daily word slideshows and a word of the day feature. This app can be upgraded to include a rhyming dictionary and example sentences.


Word Ladder (Free or $.99 versions) This is a word game in which students can change letters of words to form different words. The goal is to change enough letters in a starting word to reach a final given word.

Bluster- (Free) This is a vocabulary game from McGraw Hill with over 800 vocabulary terms. The game can be played in single player mode, team mode, or opponent mode. Students are asked to match rhyming words, synonyms, or words that share prefixes.

Google Voice (Free) This is not an app but a function of gmail. A teacher can set up a google voice account and create a phone number to link to his/her gmail account. Students can then call in and leave a voice message reciting a journal prompt or vocabulary sentence. These messages can be forwarded to your cell phone or emailed to your account in .mp3 format. This feature enables teachers to save the files of their students reading and speaking skills.

Google SMS- Students can send a text message to 466453 define (word) or translate (word) to (language) They will receive an automated reply with the definition or translation.


Apps and Programs for Struggling Readers
Prizmo ($9.99)- This app allows students or teachers to scan any document and enable a text-to-speech feature. Reading selections can easily be scanned and sent to a student's device so the student can hear the text as they read it.

Reading Trainer ($4.99) This app provides exercises in reading speed and retention.

iPrompt (Free)- This app turns an iPad into a teleprompter. Students can type in their papers, speeches, or scripts and use the app to scroll through the paper as they read or perform.

Itranslate (Free) The app can translate words in over 50 languages. Many of the languages have sound clips of the translated words. The translation provides sound clips of the words and part of speech. Words can be saved as favorites. Words and their translations can also be emailed to the student.

Closed captioning- This is a feature that can be enabled on some video clips, tv shows, and movies. Try playing a clip using closed captioning and turning off the sound to see how much the students were able to retain before playing it back with sound.

Subtext (Free) In subtext teachers can embed instruction and scaffolding right in the pages of almost any digital book or document. You can layer in web links, videos, assignments, and quizzes. Teachers can create classroom groups so students will only see notes from their teacher and their fellow classmates within the text the class is reading. This e-reader is compatible with edmodo.

Apps and Programs for Beginning ReadersAlphabet Zoo ($.99) This app tutors students in recognizing letters sounds.

Booksy (Free) This app is a learning-to-read platform for students grades K-2. The free edition comes with two free books. Additional books can be purchased. Teachers can receive emails with recordings of the student's reading. This app includes quizzes and reading awards. The school edition is $9.99, and comes with 14 books.

K12 Timed Reading Practice ($1.99) This app contains 250+ stories for readers in grades K-4. This app can track the reading speeds, levels, and progress of multiple readers.

Apps and Programs for Teaching ShakespeareShakespeare (Free) This app includes the complete works of Shakespeare. And a searchable concordance of words and phrases.
Shakespeare in Bits ($14.99 for each play) A free 2-week educator tiral is available. This app provides several of Shakespeare's more popular plays entirely in an animated format. The clips can be played full screen or side-by-side with the script. The script contains interactive hints on Shakespeare's vocabulary and historical context. An analysis is available for each scene.

Manga Shakespeare- ($4.99 for each play) This app has abridged and adapted several of Shakespeare's plays into graphic novels. These graphic novels are very interactive.

SwipeSpeare- Modern Shakespeare (Free) This app allows readers to swipe their fingers over lines of Shakespearean English to reveal the modern English equivalent.




Apps for ELAR Skills: Writing

Apps and Programs for Journaling and Creative Writing

MaxJournal (free) This is a journaling app that allows writers to include photos to create a scrapbook within their journals. Multiple student accounts can be created within this app. Journal entries can be emailed when completed.

Name Dice (Free) This app is a name generator for fiction writing.

Name Box ($.99) This app is a name generator for fiction writing that includes background information on the name such as language of origin and meaning.

Story Dice ($1.99) and Story Cubes ($1.99) These dice generate images that can be used as story starters.

The Brainstormer (Free) This app has several wheels that you can spin to generate themes, adjectives, settings, and characters for stories. This app would be most effective in higher grade levels due to the themes available in the app.

Write about This (Free) This app is for younger students. It includes more than 50 leveled text and voice prompts and the ability to create custom prompts.

Lists for Writers ($2.99) This app provides lists of character names, occupations, personality traits, conflicts, dramatic situations, settings, landforms, objects, action words, nouns, prepositions, and much more.

Writer's Hat ($.99) This app is a prompt generator.

Storywheel Lite (Free) Multiple players take turns to spin the wheel to get a picture. The player record his her voice telling a portion of the story and then passes the device on for the next person to continue the story.

Word Faucet (Free) This app sends random words spinning across the screen as story starters.

Story Starter (free) This app contains several galleries of images that can be used as story starters or journal prompts.

Story Spark ($2.99) This app is another app full of writing prompts.

Create-o-Mat (Free)- This app is a writing prompt generator.

Apps and Programs for Pre-Writing/Brainstorming
CompareNContrast ($.99) This app presents 35 sets of photos connected to a graphic organizer where students list traits that are the same and different about the two photos. The completed graphic organizers can be mailed to teachers or submitted to dropbox. Teachers and students can also create their own graphic organizers using their own photos.

Popplet Lite (Free) This is a brainstorming app that utlizes mind maps. The lite (free) version of this app allows you to create one popplet at a time. The ($4.99) version allows you to create unlimited mind maps which can be shared and edited by multiple users both on the web at popplet.com and on an ipad. Popplets can be exported as pdf and jpeg files.

Idea Sketch (Free) This app lets students create mind maps and convert them into text outlines and vice versa. Students can also copy and paste text outlines and instantly convert them into mind maps. Ideas can be emailed, saved as photos, or uploaded to facebook.

MindMeister (Free) This is a mind mapping app that requires a free account registration. It is a companion app to the website mindmeister.com. This app lets you create, edit, and share mind maps.Colors and styles of mind maps can be changed in this app. Maps can be exported in a variety of file formats. Images can be added to mind maps.

Brainstorming Canvas (Free) This app lets students brainstorm ideas using a virtual whiteboard and sticky notes. These boards can bee shared on facebook twitter, or email.



Apps and Programs for Drafting
Essay Punch (website) This is an online writing tutorial that guides students through every step of the writing process.

How to Write an Essay (Free app with optional in app purcheses) This is a ready-made lesson plan on how to write an essay.

Questia Library- Scholarly Sources for Writing Reasearch Papers (free) Thiss app gives students access to thousands of resources for research papers.

IEW Writing Tools (Free) This app includes charts and lists to guide students through the writing process with focus on structure and style.

Apps and Programs for Handwriting
Handwriting Worksheets (Free) – This app allows young students to practice cursive letters in both upper and lowercase.

Handwriting (free) This app allows children to practice their writing skills on different sheet using different size and color pens. This app has a save feature.

Handwriting without Tears (Free) – This app allows students to sign in to practice writing their letters. This app will track student progress and errors. The teacher can access reports and data for individual students or whole class data.

Letter School Lite (free) This is a bright and colorful app that students can use to practice writing their letters.

Cursive Practice (Free) This is a free app for practicing cursive using letters, words, and famous quotes. I use this for my High School students when their handwriting gets too sloppy to decipher.

ABC Cursive (Free)

Apps and Programs for Revising and Editing
Voice-Over- Once students type their essays, they can use the Voice Over tool on the Ipad to listen to their essay read aloud. Students can often catch mistakes by listening to their papers.

My Grammar Lab (Free) This app has hundreds of free practice exercises to improve grammar.


The Grading Game (Free and $.99 versions) This game is a race to find typos and grammar errors.

Peer Edit ($3.99) This app uses pre-written comments to assemble a comprehensive feedback document.

Sentence Builder (Various versions) These apps allow students to practice building grammatically correct sentences.

Mobile Mouse ($2.99) This app turns your ipad into a mouse/trackpad for your computer. You can project a paragraph onto your interactive whiteboard and have students pass around your ipad to remotely correct the mistakes in the sentence as a class.

Daily Sentence Editing ($2.99) Grades 1-6 These apps include hundreds of sentences that need to be edited. Students can click to get hints on the locations of the mistakes. This app can be used on individual devices or on a whiteboard for whole group instruction.

Docscanner (Free) You can turn any document into a PDF file by snapping a photo. Students can snap photos of their essays and then take turn correct mistakes or making suggestions for revisions in the PDF file. The PDF files can be emailed or posted to facebook or twitter.


Apps for TELPAS Skills:

Apps and Programs for ListeningVoice Over
Adobe Reader

Apps and Programs for SpeakingDragon Dictation (Free) This app allows you to speak and it will record your voice and dictate your words into text format.

iPadio (Free) This app provides an easy and fast way to create and share audio clips. This app lets you record up to 1 hour of audio, then add titles, descriptions, and images before uploading it to the internet. Students can call your ipadio account using a PIN number and whatever they recite will be recorded to your ipadio account.

Google Voice Google Voice (Free) This is not an app but a function of gmail. A teacher can set up a google voice account and create a phone number to link to his/her gmail account. Students can then call in and leave a voice message reciting a journal prompt or vocabulary sentence. These messages can be forwarded to your cell phone or emailed to your account in .mp3 format. This feature enables teachers to save the files of their students reading and speaking skills.

Misc. Apps and Programs



Screen Shot- By pressing the power and the home button on the ipad simultaneously, a screenshot image is saved in your photoroll. These photos can be emailed or posted to facebook or twitter. Students can take screenshots of their progress and email it to the teacher.

Animoto- Using the animoto.com website students can upload images and assign subtitles to create amzaing videos. This is a great tool for making video book trailers.

Join.Me (Free) Share your screen with your students no matter where they are. Students can type in a code that lets them instantly join your presentation.



StickPick ($2.99) Pick a student at random by tapping the screen. Stick pick suggests question starters for learners at different levels and records how well students respond during classroom discussion.


Google Drive or Dropbox (Free) Google Drive and Dropbox both let you bring all your photos, docs, and videos and share them easily. You can access your dropbox from all your computers and devices. You can create shared folders for students to drop docs into your folder.

Safari- Save to home screensFor a classroom set of ipads, have your classroom website saved to the iPad desktop.

Game Buzzer (Free) Game buzzer allows you to turn one ipad into a game buzzer for students to compete head to head on questions. The game buzzer will keep team scores.

Pearltrees- Pearltrees is a website where teachers can keep links to all of their favorite websites in one simplified location.

ClockPro (Free) This free app allows teacher to set countdowns, or alarms for student tasks.

Groovy Grader (Free) This is a grade slide in digital format so you can grade on the go.


Nearpod( Free) This app works with the nearpod website. Teachers can upload their favorite powerpoints and display them right on the student devices. This works great for powerpoints that students have to copy notes from. It helps the students to have the slideshow right on their desk. In nearpod you can also embed quiz questions and polls into your powerpoints.  

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