Monday, April 25, 2022

My Review of Two Phonics Apps

Teachers are using educational apps more and more in the classroom, especially now that schools have invested in personal devices for students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many educational apps out there, how is a teacher to choose among them? Why, with the help of a good rubric! In this week's ED 554 module, I was tasked with selecting and evaluating two educational apps using Tony Vincent's Education App Evaluation Rubric. This evaluation rubric hits the nail on the head by setting high standards for an educational app. The app should engage students, be easy to use, and provide specific feedback to students. For teachers, it should offer relevant activities (including higher-order thinking skills), be customizable, and track students' progress. Because I would like to be a K-2 teacher, I decided to choose two apps that were created to teach phonics to students, in the hopes that I might be able to use one or both of them in my future classroom. 

The first app that I reviewed is called PocketPhonics Basic Edition, which is available on Apple devices and clocks in at $6.99. At this price, educators can set up unlimited student accounts for phonics activities, but they must pay extra for students to access the "storybooks" ($1.49/mo or $14.49/yr), which I would say are a necessary part of the app. I give PocketPhonics an overall score of 3 using the evaluation rubric. The purpose of the app is to teach students letter sounds, first words, and handwriting. After trying the activities, I would agree that the app meets its purpose. Additionally, the activities seem appropriate for students who are just beginning to learn phonics. My only concern is that the storybooks mix in sight words with the phonetic words without any explanation, which might be confusing to a student. Additionally, the app recommends starting with lowercase letters, which are curvier and harder for little hands with weaker fine motor skills to draw. 

The strengths of PocketPhonics are that it is easy to use, is fairly engaging, and tracks student progress. The activities are straightforward and clear, and after a quick lesson on how to get started, I think a pre-K or kindergarten student would be able to operate it independently. The fun graphics, music, and sound effects should keep most students engaged; however, I could see a student growing tired of the repetitive activities (tapping on the correct phoneme in a word and the correct word in a book) and the slightly robotic, monotone voice of the app's narrator. With regard to tracking student progress, the app provides detailed data to the teacher for each student, such as what he/she has mastered, what he/she needs more practice on, and how much time he/she is spending on lessons. The data dashboard is user friendly, and the teacher can even download a weekly progress report. 

The weaker aspects of PocketPhonics are with regard to its facilitation of thinking skills, customizability, and provision of feedback to students. The app does not encourage the use of higher-order thinking skills, as opposed to some of its Montessori counterparts which allow students to experiment with letters and build their own words and stories. With regard to customization, while the app allows teachers to re-assign or skip lessons, teachers must do this manually (instead of it occurring adaptively) and in the student's interface (as opposed to via the teacher dashboard). Additionally, I do not see a way that teachers can alter the app's content, such as by adding new words to decode or storybooks to read. With regard to providing feedback, the app tells a student if the phoneme that they've selected is correct or not, but it does not tell them why. I'd like a quick corrective sentence, such as "this is the sound /b/. Try finding the sound /p/." 

The other phonics app that I reviewed is called Lalilo, which can be accessed on tablets, iPads, or computers. Lalilo provides adaptive exercises to K-2 students in phonics, word recognition, and comprehension. Teachers can sign up for a free version which gives students access to all the lessons, or schools can pay for the premium version which allows teachers to view detailed data reports to track student progress. 

Using the evaluation rubric, I would give the Lalilo app an overall score of 3.5. It has three key differences from PocketPhonics that make for the higher score. First, I think the content is slightly more appropriate for students, as Lalilo follows a clear scope and sequence and includes lessons on syllables, sight words, and word families. Second, Lalilo is more easily customized to a student's level; students take a placement test before beginning lessons, and the app is engineered to automatically adapt the difficulty of lessons according to student performance. Finally, I think Lalilo would be more engaging to students because: 1) it includes some interesting matching and multiple-choice activities; 2) there are two narrators and their voices are not as monotone, and 3) students can earn rewards such as treasures, worlds, badges, etc. to motivate them. The weaknesses of Lalilo are similar to PocketPhonics - the app does not provide specific feedback or facilitate higher-order thinking skills, and younger students will need a quick primer on how to launch it. 

I enjoyed researching and playing these apps and I look forward to getting out in the field and seeing what people are actually using!

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Becoming SMART Board-Savvy

In this week's module, we explored additional ways to design engaging, learner-driven activities for our students. After exploring the SMART Board software, non-linear "slideware" activity ideas, and inquiry-based learning using digital primary sources, I decided to design activities in the SMART Board software. I've always wanted to learn how to use a SMART Board, and after studying the software tools and creating a few of my own activities, I feel confident that I can use it in my future classroom. I love the idea of using a digital calendar during calendar time to eliminate the need for all the little paper squares. I also plan to set up timers on the SMART Board to help with classroom management. 

I designed three SMART Board activities for my first-grade unit on influential people in Virginia history. I envision using these activities as a center in which small groups of students would rotate through in order to prepare for the unit assessment. The shade screen activity could also be used as a whole-class activity to review for the assessment. In the first activity, students read a short description of an influential person in Virginia history and try to guess who the person is. They can then drag the box through the magic tube to see if their guess was correct. In the second activity, students complete an interactive timeline of Arthur Ashe's life by dragging pictures to the corresponding clues on the timeline. In the third activity, students pull down the screen shade to read a question and then pull it down a little more to read the answer. I also added audio narration to each question and answer in case students are having trouble reading the sentences. 

I really enjoyed exploring the SMART Board software, and I hope that I have this technology in my future classroom!

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Digital Storytelling

In this week's module, we learned how to engage students in creative projects such as digital storytelling, storymapping, and 3D printing. I chose to create a digital story that presents content to my first-grade students; however, I believe that upper elementary educators could facilitate projects in which students use Adobe Creative Express (formerly Adobe Spark) to create their own digital stories. 

I would use my digital story, "History with Tommy G.: Maggie Lena Walker," in a first-grade unit on Maggie L. Walker, one of the influential people included in the first-grade history and social studies standards of learning. On the first day of the unit, I would introduce Maggie Walker to the students using my Pear Deck slides. Then on the second day, I would show my digital story to "hammer home" her contributions. I think my students would be interested to see my 9-year-old son trying to understand why Maggie Walker is important to Virginia history. After we watch the video, I would divide students into partners or small groups and ask them to discuss two things they learned from the video and one question that they have. Then I would give them a choice for sharing their observations - either recording a video to Flipgrid or writing in their journal. 

I had so much fun making this digital story and look forward to using digital storytelling in my future classroom. 

Monday, March 21, 2022

Personalizing Learning

In this week's module we learned how and why it is important to personalize learning for our students.  I love this quote from our textbook: "personalization...allows teachers to increase a student's chances of engaging with learning materials, mastering learning materials, and applying learning materials..." (Graham et al., 2019, section 4.0). It is only natural for students to want to study topics that they are interested in and/or that are relevant to their present lives or futures. 

Personalization engages students by 1) tailoring learning to their personal interests, needs, and goals, and 2) giving students some control over their learning. Let's discuss the first point. How can we customize learning to our students' interests and needs - by asking them what their interests and needs are!  I would use something like this first-grade learner profile to find out how my students like to learn and what kinds of topics I can use to better engage them in learning. I like the examples from the textbook in which occupational interests are integrated into math problems to make them more appealing to students (Graham et al., 2019, Table 4.3).

Another way to personalize learning is to provide choice boards or playlists to students. These tools allow for learners to make their own path. Some options include letting learners 1) select the order in which they complete activities; 2) choose enrichment activities after required ones are completed; or 3) complete activities of their choice until mastery is reached (Graham et al., 2019). 

I really enjoyed putting together a Pocahontas choice board for a first-grade unit on important people in Virginia history.  The rows of my choice board table include different ways that students can learn (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic), and the columns give different levels of review (remediation, review, and enrichment). I would explain to my students that each activity has a point level of five or ten points, and that they need to earn ten points. I would also have the students tell me their planned path before they begin, so that I can support them and match them up with partners as needed. 

Reference

Graham, C. R., Borup, J., Short, C. R., & Archambault, L. (2019). K-12 blended teaching: A guide to personalized learning and online integration [eBook]. EdTechBooks.org. http://edtechbooks.org/k12blended

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Flipping My Classroom!

I really enjoyed this assignment in which we had to "flip" our classroom and create an engaging, captioned video for students to watch outside of class time. I created an Edpuzzle video about Arthur Ashe for my first graders to learn about his life and achievements and answer four assessment questions. Then when we gather as a group, we can discuss what we learned and compare him to other important people in the history of Virginia. 

Saturday, February 26, 2022

Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)

This week we learned about personal learning networks (PLNs) and how they can help teachers discover and share resources and ideas. After reviewing the list of suggested networks compiled by Dr. Langran, I chose to set up a new PLN on Twitter. I am already connected to a few educational groups and teachers through my Instagram account, and I will continue to use and grow that. However, I can see from Dr. Langran's information that Twitter is a very active place for educators to share ideas, and so I would like to try it out. 

I set up an account on Twitter for personal use a few years ago but did not end up using it much, so it was easy for me to tweak it for my future endeavors as an educator. I was already following my children's elementary school and my son's third grade teacher, and I decided to follow their school system (and hopefully future employer!), Fairfax County Public Schools, as well. I also took Dr. Langran's advice to follow her, Edutopia, ISTE, AMTE, and NCSS. Finally, I found two new accounts on my own - Kinderchat and Fountas & Pinnell. I am currently a pre-kindergarten teacher and hope to be a kindergarten teacher, so I think Kinderchat will have some good resources for me. Additionally, Fountas and Pinnell have great resources for early literacy, so I chose to follow them as well. 

I am already learning from my new PLN! I watched a short video posted by Edutopia today called "How to Respond to Student Outbursts." I have two students in my pre-K class who have frequent, intense emotional outbursts. This video reminded me of concrete ways to help these students and also reassured me because I have been implementing many of these steps already. In my screenshot below, you can see that I "quote tweeted" the Edutopia post and remarked that the strategies in the video remind me of those we use at my preschool from the Conscious Discipline program. I included the Conscious Discipline Twitter handle to link these two resources and show my appreciation to both.


"Kerry Granfield's Twitter Home Page" by Kerry Granfield


Reference

Edutopia [@edutopia]. (2022, February 26). When a student has a verbal or physical outburst in the classroom, it can be stressful and scary. This research-backed [Tweet; thumbnail link to video]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/edutopia/status/1497565613165735938 

Monday, February 21, 2022

Pear Deck

Pear Deck is a fantastic tool for making presentations more interactive. In this week's module, we made a Pear Deck slideshow to support the standard of learning (SOL) that we selected in Module 1. To teach my SOL for first graders about influential people in the history of Virginia (history and social science SOL 1.3), I made a slideshow about Maggie Lena Walker

My slideshow could be used in the classroom (if every child has a device) or in the remote setting. The objective of the lesson is for students to be able to describe the story of Maggie L. Walker and her contributions to Virginia. I included a visual thinking strategy exercise to kick off the lesson and engage the students. To make the content more interesting and accessible to first graders, I included interactive questions to help them relate their lives to Maggie's, such as how would you feel if you had to wash clothes every day, and how do you help your community? At the end of the presentation, I included a slide to formatively assess what students learned about Maggie Walker. 

In addition to teaching SOL 1.3, I also included a few slides to support SOL 1.1 - history and social science skills. I included several primary sources (photographs) to help students develop an understanding of Maggie's history. I included a timeline to help the students see that Maggie Walker lived at a different time from them, and from the other influential people in Virginia history. Finally, I included an interactive slide to help them practice the key content vocabulary word - contribution.