Snow Days Take 2

 Snow days in Alabama are getting old.  The occasional surprise day off is great but 6 in three weeks is over the top.  I’m ready to get back to routine and teaching my students.  Here are a few new to me ideas that I plan on using when the right lessons come around.

1.   BiblioNasium:  This is a free protected social network designed to engage, encourage and excite students about reading.  It helps you drive a challenging independent reading program.  It works like a digital reading log.  Teachers can offer reading challenges and recommended book list. Students can share book recommendations within the class.  Parents and teachers can monitor student reading, too. The BiblioNasium mascot offers encouragement, entertainment, and rewards good reading behavior.  This would have been the perfect tool to have in place this week during the snow event

2.   Storehouse:  This is a visual storytelling app for the iPad.  You can combine photos, videos, and text to create a story.  Unlike other storytelling apps, it is a blank canvas that allows you to drop in pictures and video clips from the camera roll, dropbox, or instagram.  It is a create tool to use to showcase the sequence of a project.  They can write about themselves, field trips, or snow days.  The possibilities are endless.

3.   Write About It Free:  This app is designed to encourage writing narrative and opinion pieces.  The app gives a picture and a prompt.  Students write their response and publish their writing piece.  The levels can be changed for more challenging prompts.  This app is easy to navigate.  It allows students to save their work.  Multiple authors can work on the same piece.  They can also publish their work by recording themselves reading their work. Students can email their finished writings to you or their parents to share their work. It can also be saved to the camera roll.

4.   Kid in Story Book Maker:  (This app is $6.99 but it was free last week.) This app makes it easy and fun to create stories for kids.  The app has 8 templates that let you add student’s pictures to create a story.  Student’s can record their voice reading each page.  After pictures are added and voices recorded, students will enjoy reading their very own visual story.  Stories can be shared by email or dropbox.  This is a great app for the beginning reader or young students that need visual cues along with audio to help with their reading.

5.   Duplo:  Lego Duplo offers a series of free apps that encourage problem solving and following directions. There are several apps that include Zoo, Train, Food, and Circus.  Young students follow the directions to complete tasks in each app.

I hope you have a snow free Valentine’s Day and a great weekend!

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