In Mrs. Kaeser's Kindergarten classroom at Kennerly, students are enjoying using the iPad as a listening station. She found this headphone splitter by Belkin which plugs into 1 iPad and allows up to 5 students to listen together.
These students were using the Scholastic app "Storia." First, the teacher downloaded the Storia app on the iPad (there is also an app for the computer) and then received 5 free books to download upon signing in using the Scholastic account email address and password. Additional eBooks can be purchased with bonus points or dollars. To learn more, visit scholastic.com/storiaclubs
Within the app, Storia bookshelves can be personalized for individual or group student reading. The engaging read-alouds help build reading confidence for the youngest readers. In addition to listening to the stories, many of the eBooks contain interactive elements that engage readers with fun learning activities.
These Kindergarten students were working together to read a book and interact with the enrichment activities.
Whether you are working together as a whole class or students are enjoying an eBook on their own during independent reading, the Storia app can work with your PC, iPad, or other Android devices. You can use your same account on up to five different devices at once.
For today's lesson, we were focusing on visualization. The goal of the lesson was to have students create a mental picture of what they were reading and then to illustrate what they were visualizing as they read the text.
In their small reading group, I gave each student a different piece of the story Where the Wild Things Are.
They read the text and then used the iPad to draw what they were visualizing while reading. They used the app Doodle Buddy to draw an illustration to match the assigned part of the text they read.
We were then able to share our illustrations and retell the story to the other members of the reading group.
