iPad Lesson 8

For the final iPad lesson, the app used was called iLearn With Boing. This app is part of an educational series that focuses on multiple subjects areas. I used the literacy app for this lesson.

When you open the app you are directed to the home screen. There you see a giant iceberg and two little icebergs. On top of the big iceberg is a space ship. There are four creatures on the ice as well. The closest one to the front of the screen is an alien named Boing. The alien asks the student who they want to play with. They can choose between the bears, penguins, and the seals. Each animal corresponds to a different part of literacy. The bears work on letter practice, the penguins work on phonics, and the seals work on words. The only animal available with the free download is the seal. In app purchases are required to unlock the other animals.

After clicking on the seal you are taken to another page. The app tells the students the word they have to spell. Next, they have to put the seals in the correct order on the whale's back before it swims away. The app puts the first seal in the correct spot for the student so they can see what they are being asked to do.

Above the whale's back is a picture of the word they're trying to spell. Then on the back of the whale is the letters to spell the word. Above the letters is a shadow to mark where the seal has to go. The letters are already in the correct order on the whale, the student just has to drag the seals from the water into the right place. Each seal is wearing a winter hat that has the letter on it. When the seal is dragged to the spot it is supposed to be it says its letter sound.

In the top right hand corner there is a timer. Students are allotted a certain amount of time for each word before the whale swims away and they have to start over. Once students spell the word correctly, the app reads the word aloud before a new word is presented.

If students make it through a certain number of words spelled correctly they earn a prize. A little screen pops up and the student is allowed to play with their gift. It is usually something they can dress up and move around the page. After awhile the app redirects the student back to the original game. This is a great feature because other wise you may have students who just play with their gift the entire time instead of going back to the app.

For the lesson I taught the focus was on the student being able to hear a word and spelling it correctly, by naming its various phonemes in the correct order. The standard that went along with this focus was, RF.1.2.D.

To begin the lesson we first talked about spelling and what we do when we are writing and don't know how to spell a word. She told me that you sound it out. I then introduce the app and explained that she would be working on spelling different words. I let her know that she would need to say the word and the sounds she hears because it will help her with her spelling.

She then played level 1 of the seal game, which focused on words. The student picked up how to play the game pretty quickly and was able to do it independently. While playing, she always beat the timer. I encouraged her as she was playing to say the letter sounds along with the game. As she was working I had to remind her to put the letters in the correct order. She would sometimes begin by dragging the middle letter or ending letter first. After a few times reminding her that we want to start with the first letter, she began to do it all on her own.

This was a beneficial app that helps students with spelling. If I could change something about the app it would be that you can make it more challenging, by removing the outlined words. This way the students would really have to think on their own how to spell the words, instead of just mindlessly dragging the seals to their matching letter. I think that this app was too easy for my student, but I would still recommend it for kindergarten teachers to use with their students who are emergent spellers.

References:
[iLearn With Boing app logo]. Retrieved March 10, 2017, from https://itunes.apple.com/ky/app/kids-abc-letter-spelling-literacy/id502026679?mt=8