iPads and education

Children love classic fairy tales and many early childhood classrooms incorporate them into a unit of study. These tales have stood the test of time and when children hear these stories, they often imagine themselves playing a role in them.

One of my kindergarten students’ favorite fairy tales is The Gingerbread Man. There are many classic renditions of the story as well as more modern takes on the old tale…such as The Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett, Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst, The Gingerbread Pirates by Kristin Kladstrup, The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone, along with many other titles. However, one of their favorites is The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka. They love the twist of the Stinky Cheese Man that no one wants to eat, in place of the yummy gingerbread man that everyone wants to eat. This twist allows children to imagine other characters in a similar storyline. By exploring this concept, students can develop critical thinking skills, sequencing skills, as well as literary elements such as character, plot, and setting.

Adapting stories with the iPad affords the opportunity to incorporate the built-in Camera app and take the learning outside. The children would consider what “twist” they would like to use in their own story, decide on a character, and choose where the character would run. After taking a photograph of the setting, the children would use the Markup tool in Photos to draw their character in the setting. Text can also be added in Markup if the character is speaking.

Marc Faulder, an Apple Distinguished Educator friend in the UK, created this project and had his students adapt The Gingerbread Man story through an outdoor activity. You can read about this adventure here.

Here are a couple of pictures from an early childhood classroom trying the activity with their iPad devices: The first is a chocolate chip cookie running down the sidewalk and the second is a slice of pizza going down the slide on the playground.

By integrating a child’s natural love for stories and the iPad, students have a unique ability to explore and capture their environment, as well as tell a story in a creative and fun way.

Download Your Free ‘Young Children Can Create’ Guides Now.

These 4 free guides are published on the Apple Book Store right now and written in partnership with Kristi Meeuwse, Marc Faulder, Jason Milner. Read more about The Young Children Can Create series here-

The Rich Potential of Children’s Photography

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The Rich Potential of Children’s Video.

The Rich Potential of Children’s Drawing.

The Rich Potential of Children’s Music Making.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting -Edmund Burke

I am on spring break this week. It has been such a luxury to linger over coffee and the newspaper in the mornings. That has been about all of the luxury I’ve been able to enjoy because even though I’m on spring break from my job, I am not on spring break from doctoral classes. I have been immersed in scholarly articles on early literacy. So, while this is all fresh on my mind, I am going to share a few work samples from some of our recent literacy activities on iPads.

We have been using the Feltboard App for word work quite a bit lately. Here are a few samples:

While we don’t usually work with /ow/ and /ou/ in kindergarten, it was a conversation in one of my reading groups and one of my students created this:

My kids love speech bubbles! This was in response to a class read aloud.

This is a 4 square writing organizer on Feltboard App. Students can transfer ideas from this to an organized short paragraphs.

Using the app to recreate scenes from a story can help students have deeper conversations about a read aloud activity.

This was created in Drawing Pad app during our insect unit.

Literacy extension activities are important in building emergent literacy skills. When we read a book together, we often do some kind of literacy response. The iPad is perfectly suited for these extension activities with creation apps that allow students to show what they know by making their thinking visible, extend their thinking and reflect on learning. We read for a variety of purposes. Sometimes I read to my class simply for pleasure, other times, after I read, we focus on building decontextualized language skills. We move beyond the concrete and talk about intangible aspects of the text. This allows me to help take their language skills to the next level. When we use the iPads to enhance literacy skills, we are synthesizing both tangible and intangible language. It encourages children to use more complex language forms. Simple activities such as rhyming words scaffold learning for more advanced literacy skills.

Immersing young children in literacy activities all throughout the day builds a strong foundation upon which future skills are built. These activities, along with reflection, help students “digest” what they read and makes them better readers.

Today we will do exciting new things. Lets get to it!

iTeach with iPads

Innovating learning and literacy with iPads

Adapting Classic Stories with iPad

Building Early Literacy Skills With iPads

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