Kindergarten English Language Arts K.9- Demonstrate early phonological awareness to basic phonemic awareness skills in spoken words.
Starfall
https://www.starfall.com/h/
Starfall is a paid app, that offers a wide range of skills for students in kindergarten through third grade. Starfall covers a wide range of reading and math skills online. Although it is a paid site, there is a lot that can be used on the site for free. A home membership is $35 per year, a teacher membership is $70 per year (that is for 6 students), a classroom membership is $195 per year and a school membership is $355 per year.
Kindergarten English Language Arts K.10- Apply knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and word analysis skills to decode and encode words accurately in both isolation and in decodable- grade appropriate text.
Reading.com
https://reading.com/
This is a new app that I found over the summer. I taught kindergarten 4 years ago and when I found out I was coming back I started looking at some new technology apps that I could use. I found reading.com. I have been playing with it for a semester and I have not been asked to pay anything. You start at a base level and have to work your way up through lessons. I love the reading lessons, it has a swipe button that it makes students swipe each sound as they read words. It also has different markings for sounds that are short and sounds that are continuous. It really helps students see that first sound and connect it to the middle sound. My students were forgetting about the first sound, but this really shows them as they drag their finger across. This app has letter naming, letter sounds, blending and reading books.
Kindergarten Math K.8- Represent addition and subtraction up to 10 with concrete objects, fingers, pennies, mental images, drawings, claps or other sounds, acting out situations, verbal explanations, expressions, or equations.
IXL
https://www.ixl.com/
This app is also a paid app. You can do a home, classroom or school subscription. Our school pays for this subscription for our school. This app is great because it can be used on a device, like a tablet, or a chromebook. The teacher can assign a certain skill that students are working on and students work and as they are working the teacher gets data on how many problems the student attempted and how many were correct. IXL covers all reading and math skills. It also has social studies and science skills.
For me, in kindergarten, the app that we use the most is Starfall. My students use this everyday on their tablets during center time. I have also used this app during small group time. In this age of technology, students are so comfortable using technology, my students love when we use them. Starfall is their favorite. I always tell my parents about these apps in a letter that we send out before school starts. Starfall is very user friendly!
Brittany, all of these apps seem to be great tools to use in the classroom. I had never heard of IXL and did a little research after reading your post, it looks like it would be fairly user friendly as well. I personally love Starfall. When I taught elementary, it was a favorite and so beneficial, especially for my EL students that needed that extra practice offered in a fun way.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to share my perspective as a parent! My children used to have to do IXL for math homework and we absolutely hated it. The more you get wrong, the more you have to do. I remember trying to help my kids with IXL math homework and if it was a unit they were weak in, we'd literally do math for hours to try to get up to 80% (or whatever the teacher said we had to do.) This app should be used cautiously. I would recommend stopping and reteaching when you notice a student struggling.
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