Second Graders Love Chicktionary!

While most of our iPod touches are in third grade, we do have a second grade class using them this year. The teacher has really embraced using them with students and has used them in centers for a variety of activities, such as oral reading fluency recordings.

However, one of the students favorite app activities is Chicktionary! If you are not familiar with Chicktionary, it is a fun word game where users are given a set of letters to create a variety of 3, 4, 5, or up to 7 letter words. The setting is in a chicken coop filled with chickens and there is a lot of engaging movement and clucking going on.

Users can earn points and "eggchievements" for additional rewards in the game.

These students are really into the game and their teacher has created a worksheet for them to use in their center. As they create words, they write them on the worksheet. When they have a collection of words, they then use them in sentences.

Learning can be such fun!

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Digital Science Fair Projects

At the end of the year, many of our schools hold school wide science fairs. Students plan Science fair project tri-fold display board and implement projects and then present the process and resulting data on tri-fold display boards much like this. One class decided to go green and do away with using display boards. They conducted their experiments and recorded the data but rather than create paper reports they used their iPads. Project Data Graphs The students took pictures and video and created graphs and other visual representations and imported those into the Explain Everything app. During the science fair, students brought their iPads to the school's multipurpose room and presented their projects to attendees right from the iPads. In addition to using digital tools, these students are also developing their listening, speaking, and presentation skills - all vital to college and career readiness.

T. A. G. Strategy

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Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers

Check out these online graphic organizers from Holt: Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers The site has over 30 graphic organizers for a variety of tasks. Each graphic organizer is interactive and can be downloaded onto a computer with Adobe Reader and be filled out right on the computer. There are also Teaching Notes available with tips and lesson ideas for each organizer What we really appreciate is that they also work on the iPads! Using the "Open In" feature in an IOS web browser such as Safari or Chrome, you can import the graphic organizer into the Adobe Reader app and easily fill in the fields. Students can then take a screenshot of the completed graphic organizer to share with their teacher or import into another iPad project.

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