One of the apps you can use to support Language in the classroom is
Pic Collage Kids. It can do so much more than just creating posters! It is a photo editor and collage maker with a variety of fonts, stickers, gifs and backgrounds. Students can choose photos from their camera roll or safely search for images online. Check out what you can create in the Language classroom:
Use
Popplet (or
Popplet Lite) as a graphic organizer or to have students identify character traits. We previously
wrote about Popplet here.
Use
Paper by fiftythree to create Blackout Poetry without having to destroy a book.
Finally, check out
Adobe Spark Post to publish student-written Haiku or other poetry.
Surprise! We just wrote about this app, too! We wrote about the other Spark apps a few months ago as well, and once you've used one of the suite, the others are easy to pick up.
Additional Resources:
Epic Books is an app that has hundreds of books at levels from pre-K to Grade 6. Some of the titles have a "read to me" feature so students can hear the book being read. The best thing about Epic Books is that these are real, high-quality children's books. Students will recognize familiar titles like Scaredy Squirrel and Big Nate. They have also recently added high-quality educational videos. Epic Books is free for educators!
Newsela is a site that allows teachers to assign articles to students based on reading level. Newsela is available both in your browser (even on iPad) or with an iPad app. As with many sites, Newsela offers both a free version and a paid version that includes more features.
The Smithsonian has a fantastic collection of non-fiction articles on a wide variety of topics. The website is divided into TweenTribune Junior (K-4), TweenTribune (Grade 5-6 & Grade 7-8), and Teen Tribune (Grade 9-12). The articles are searchable by Lexile level, and many are written at multiple levels to help you differentiate instruction. The site is a free resource, and includes a teacher section with lesson plans.
Common Lit is created and maintained by teachers. It has articles sorted by Theme, and by using their text sets you could have students in the class reading different articles to tackle the same topic. Articles are written at levels ranging from Grade 5-12. This is a free resource.
Teaching Kids News is created and maintained by Ontario educators and offers daily, kid friendly news. Articles are written in kid friendly language and offer information for Grades 2 to 8. The site makes connections to the Ontario Curriculum and offers thought provoking questions to get students thinking critically about what they have just read. This is a free resource.
OWL Connected is a great resource for kid friendly information. It offers a variety of search options (hot topics, pictures, interviews, etc) including Canadian Content. The articles are updated daily and you can sign up for a daily newsletter. One of the neat features of this website is the OWL Connected Reporters. These reporters are kids interviewing experts in the field! This is a free resource.
DOGONews offers current events articles for K-8 classrooms. All articles include text, pictures, a video and a vocabulary bank at the end. Most of the articles offer a text-to-speech option where the students can have the article read to them. This website provides the option to create an account and will sync with your Google Classroom. You can assign articles to students in your classroom. This is a free resource.
Finally,
Flipboard is an app that we love for curating content for students.
This past December I spent part of my Christmas break participating in the Ditch that Textbook Summit put on by Matt Miller. I have to say that it was some of the most useful and thought provoking PD I have taken online.
