This is my fourth post on using iPads in my classroom. In case you missed it, you can read Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 as well. In this post I’m going to share a few more activities I’ve tried as well as a great curating site my department head showed us.
Kahoot continues to be a smash hit. Students inquire daily if we can play it. One way to spice up Kahoot if you finish the game and have time to spare is the ghost round. I first read about this on Maris Hawkins‘ blog, and decided to try it when I had a few minutes at the end of one of my classes. Basically, you play the whole game again, but the students are competing against themselves from the previous round (the ghosts of themselves). They try to see if they can beat their score. This round goes a lot quicker because I don’t usually stop to go over each answer, since I just did that during the prior round.
Another app I tried was Move and Match. It’s basically a way to make manipulatives that students can move around on the screen instead of cutting them out and sorting them and losing them. This is a paid app, but you only need the paid version on one machine to make the projects. The rest of the iPads can use a free version called M & M Lite, which allows students to play with projects but not make them.
Once you make a project, you need to email it to yourself and upload it somewhere like Google Drive or Dropbox. Then students download it and open it in the app. I made three projects: one where students dragged and dropped adverbs into various sentences, one where students dragged and dropped words into sentences to describe pictures, and one where students were given a wide variety of words and were asked to make sentences based on prompts I had on the SMART Board.
Many students enjoyed using the app, and the main advantage is in streamlining the process of distributing the materials. The other great advantage is being able to slowly scaffold and add more words with the click of a button. The main concern that students expressed was that the app didn’t offer instant feedback. Groups were left waiting as I hustled around to verify their answers. I’m sure there are similar apps to this that offer the ability to give instant feedback, it’s just a question of finding one. If you know of an app, please let me know!
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Every year when we learn adverbs, I show students short clips of French music videos and the students offer their opinions using “bien” or “mal.” This year, I thought I’d try it with the iPads. Having the source of input closer will positively impact their engagement. Students watched one minute of each video in groups, then discussed their opinions. I didn’t have headphones, but I hoped that it wouldn’t be too much of an issue if they kept the volume low. I was wrong. The interfering sounds made it very difficult to focus. I do think using the iPads kept the students more engaged, but I’ll probably just stick to the SMART Board next year unless we get headphones (or have students bring in their own).
The final tool I want to share today is EdShelf, which is a site for curating apps to use in the classroom. My department head showed it to us at our last meeting. You can follow other users, create “shelves” for different groups of apps, and browse apps by discipline, purpose, grade level, and other criteria. I really like the idea of EdShelf, but I’m hoping to see more users adopt it. I don’t see a lot of language teachers on it as of yet. If you’re not a member, be sure to join! Here are my three “shelves.”
