Inference Ace

Week of March 14^th - March 18th

The name of this week’s app was called the “Inference Ace.” This app was designed to help students build strong inferencing skills. When students develop strong inferencing skills, this will help students’ level of reading comprehension increase. After reviewing my students’ data, I realized that this was an area that needed to be readdressed. Inference Ace will help students to learn the different types of inferencing and even keep track of which types of inferencing the student is better/worse at completing. Lastly, the app has a couple of different levels that will actually time the students to check their fluency. This was important to me because I wanted to see how the students’ fluency, or rate they are reading, changes as they transition from reading with me to themselves or a partner.

I used this app as an engagement technique in guided reading. For every two weeks, each of my guided reading group has a topic that we focus in on. We have covered topics like main idea and details, summarizing, finding themes, comparing and contrasting, cause and effect, and a few more. But there was one large third grade topic that I realized that we had not covered as much as I would like: making inferences. Finding inferences throughout a passage are a hard concept to complete and to do it well. As I began to talk about inferences with the students, I realized that they had no clue what it was. What they had previously learned about inferences had not stuck. So I decided that for the next two weeks, that would be the area of focus during guided reading groups. After lesson planning, I realized that I wanted to make inferencing fun for the students. I researched and found the app called “Inference Ace.” It had received wonderful reviews, so I decided to see if this app would help to motivate my students more to read and better understand the concept of making inferences about pieces of text. As a way to get the students ready for the guided reading lesson, they were allowed ten minutes on the app, reading passages and making inferences.

This app received mixed results from my students. I think a majority of them liked it but it did not help them to see themselves as a better reader or did not help them to become more motivated to read. For question one that asked them to rank the overall score of the app, students ranked Inference Ace with a 3.67. That was honestly a little higher than I expected, which means that most students actually do like being challenged to find the inferences in a passage. For the second question, which asked them if the app made them feel like a better reader, eleven said yes and eleven said no. My class is pretty much split based on academic ability, so this result from the survey did not surprise me. The third question asked the student if the app motivated them to want to read more. The average score was a 3.68, which means that for most students Inference Ace made them want to read more. For the fourth question, the average score was a 3.59. This question focused on whether or not the app had an impact on their thoughts about themselves as readers. Lastly, the fifth question asked the students if they would use Inference Ace again. According to my results, seventeen students would use this app over again and five students would not.

There were many positives and benefits that I saw from this app. The first benefit that I saw with this app is that it really helped my students to understand making inferences. All of my students started out struggling with this app and the questions it asked. But after a couple of days, where we practiced with this concept over and over again, the students got better and better. Inferencing is a hard concept to learn, so this app was extremely helpful to explain what inferencing was and how to do it. The other positives of this app were that it is written in a way that helps students with their testing skills. It presents the questions in multiple choice and gives the students four choices to choose from. The app is written in a way that is suitable for all of my third graders, which includes all of my really high students and my really low students. I feel that it asks questions that hit both of extremes in my class. Lastly, the app rewards the students once he/she gets a certain number of questions correct. This incentive and reward is a positive reinforcement for the students.

The biggest negative that I saw with this app was that, for as many levels as my students completed, the passage that the students had to read never was longer than three sentences. I was disappointed in this because I feel that students have to first find the clues to make the inference and then figure out the inference. A lot of the questions were basic and I thought they could have made the questions a little harder. For this app to work the best, I think that it would be helpful to have different levels that the different academic levels of students could compete during class. Another negative that I saw with this app was that it did not have a read aloud feature. A few of my students really still need this and when an app does not have this feature, some of my lower students struggle and dislike the app.

The biggest change that I would make with this app would be to find a way to extend the passages for the students to read. It is not only important for the students to be able to make the inference but they also need to look for the key words and details that support the inference. Also, I would have added this app into the Free Centers rotation so the students could have the extra time to work on this area of focus. Lastly, I would find a way to better explain to the students how to connect making inferences and increasing motivation to read go hand in hand with one another.

3rd Grade Friendzy

Week of March 7^th- March 11^th

This week’s app is called 3rd Grade Friendzy. According to their website, this app is a, “trivia based application aligned to the Common Core standards for third grade”. This app has an unique feature about it, which is why I personally liked it so much. 3^rd Grade Friendzy has a social component. Students can play this app and challenge themselves, their friends, or other students from around the world. This attribute of the app appealed to me since I have a very competitive class.

I used this 3^rd Grade Friendzy App as a part of our Free Centers rotation. Students were allowed to use this app during their own free time when they finished their work and during their Tuesday’s and Friday’s Free Centers periods. The students were allowed to choose one of the following English Language Arts area: reading, vocabulary, or language. Each of these topics relate back to becoming a better reader, which is why I provided my students with choice. This game became a competition for a few of my students which helped them to focus in on practicing their reading by using this app.

Overall, this app received mixed reviews from my students. After talking to a few, I feel that the students really enjoyed the competition portion of the app. On the other hand, I think they felt that the questions and the reading portion of the app was too easy for most of them. For question one, when the students ranked the app with an overall score of 2.32. I thought this was a pretty accurate representation after discussing with the students their thoughts on the app. When the students were asked if they thought the 3^rd Grade Friendzy made them feel like better readers, six said yes and sixteen said no. I contribute those results to the level and degree of the questions. The biggest complaint I heard from my students was that this app was too easy for them. For question three, my students averaged a score of 2.64 in helping to increase motivation to read. I was hoping that for this app, this question’s score would be higher because of the competitive component in the app. I was a little disappointed to see this score not average higher. For question four, the students’ average score was 2.55. Lastly, the students responded with eleven yes and eleven no’s for question number five. This showed me that the students were pretty much split down the middle on their thoughts about using this app again.

The biggest positives that I saw from this app were two important things. The first positive about the app was that it helped students with their testing skills. The multiple choice questions are written in ways that are similar to what they need to be use for their progress monitoring. By practicing these types of questions, becoming test takers will follow. The next positive of this app was the competition portion of the app. I loved how it challenged the students to be better than yesterday, but also gave them the opportunity to compete with their classmates and other third graders around the world. Overall, this app was a fun and engaging way to review ELA topics like reading, language, and vocabulary.

There were a few negatives or parts of the app that I know my students and myself did not like. First, I did not like how the app only asked multiple choice questions. I felt that after a while the questions became repetitive and were too easy for the majority of my students. Next, I felt that this app did not help the students to become more motivated to read. I think this was because of the setup of the questions. It never gave the students a passage to read or sentences to try to figure out. The questions asked were basic and not entirely related to just reading or reading comprehension. Lastly, I did not like the set-up of the app. My students struggled to understand how to work the app and that wasted some of their time on the app.

The biggest change that I would enforce in my classroom when the students use this app is having the students pair themselves up with students who may not be on their same reading level. There were a few issues that students who struggle with reading went up against students who are great with reading. This was not good for the student who struggles with reading and their confidence level/ self-esteem in themselves as a reader. I would make sure that students challenged another student who was in their reading group or assign them a student from another reading group that they will be compatible to when competing. 

Vocabulary SpellingCity

Week of February 29^th- March 4^th

Since a lot of schools and districts push on the importance of phonological awareness, phonics, spelling, and vocabulary as a major component of reading, I wanted to incorporate an app that focused on them. I found the award-winning app called Vocabulary SpellingCity. When looking at the app, I liked what I saw. Vocabulary SpellingCity provides spelling, vocabulary, writing, and language arts activities for K-12 cross-curricular word study. According to their website, “Our primary focus is now on vocabulary, especially the meaning of words used in specific contexts. We offer seven vocabulary games and activities, plus two writing activities, in which students can demonstrate their mastery of the meaning of words by using them in context, writing their own sentences and paragraphs. Our activities to build phonological awareness and phonics skills use a patent-pending technology developed by Vocabulary SpellingCity. These games let students see and hear words sounded out, spelled, and used in a sentence.” Looking through the app, I liked the games and activities that were offered for the students for their spelling and vocabulary words.

Overall, I thought this app was going to be a great addition to our classroom. I used this app during I & E time (interventions and enrichment). I decided to have students get on this app every morning for about ten to fifteen minutes to participate in an activity that quizzed them on their vocabulary/spelling words for the week. Students who struggle with their spelling and vocabulary test had to go on the app every morning throughout the week. My other students, who do well with vocabulary or spelling tests had to go on the app only three times that week. I set a routine for each of them and by Tuesday they knew how to get on the app and which activities they could pick to complete. Every morning the students seemed excited to get on the app and work for a little bit of time, so my data collection came to a surprise to me.

The students did not like this app at all. In my honest opinion, I think most of my students are too high to see the benefits of the app. I talked to my students to better understand why they did not like this app. The higher students told me that it was way too easy and they wanted to be able to read more instead of practice their spelling and vocabulary. (To me that was great news! It has been my goal to help shape them into lifelong readers!) But my students who are lower and struggle with vocabulary and spelling seemed to think that this app was okay. They thought it would be fun to do on their iPad or computer at home. One of my students told me that his mom lets him do the spelling quiz every night during the week before Friday and he received an 80 on his spelling test compared to his normal grade of a 30 or 40. My students gave this app an overall score of 1.77. Obviously, my students were not really a fan of the app. When the students were asked if this app made them feel like better readers, two said yes and twenty said no. The average score for question three: 1.68, which asked them if the app made them more motivated to read, gave me the overwhelming sense that it did not. The students also did not give this app a high average rating for question four (1.59) that asked them if it helped them to see themselves as better readers. Lastly, when asked if they would use the app again, one student said yes and the rest said no. I was actually really disappointed with these results considering that it is an award winning app.

The biggest positive that I saw from that app was talking to my one student who really seemed to benefit from using the app. I think the app gave him the confidence booster he needed to do better on his spelling test. I even wrote an email to his mother so she can see what made the difference in his spelling scores, because we have been struggling to find something to help him all year long. The app and website has a lot of cool features and activities that you can choose from to help you expand your vocabulary and practice your spelling skills. I love how the app uses words from different subjects. For example, on the app you can choose to practice words about geometry, space, U.S states, etc. I think this would be a great app to use with English Language Learners- especially if you are going to be talking about any of the topics on the app and using those academic words that they might not be familiar with. Also, the activities on the app are helpful. They all can help with increasing vocabulary and spelling skills.

There were a few negatives that I saw with this app, besides that it did not go over so well with my students. First on the app, you can only choose from a list of words which in my eyes was the biggest negative. But on the website, you can type in the words you want to use! So when I implemented this app in my classroom, some days the students would use the app on the iPad and other times they would go on the website through the iPad. I wanted them to be able to practice their words for their spelling test on Friday which is why I made them do that. Another negative that I saw the more that I used this app was that in a way I can see how my students thought it was “babyish.” For my higher students who do not struggle with spelling or vocabulary, they did not like how the app read the sentences and found the activities to be boring. The app is supposed to be used for students K-12 and I think it is more age appropriate for students under fourth grade.

The best part of implementing this app is that I found something to help one of my students who has been struggling with his spelling and vocabulary all year long. This app has given him a new boost of confidence that will hopefully help him to continue to be successful with his spelling and vocabulary tests. I’ve decided that he will be on this app during I & E time for the next couple of weeks and I want to continue to monitor his spelling and vocabulary scores to see if this app continues to make a difference. If this app can help this student, then by all means, implementing this app in my classroom was one of the best things that could have happened!

NewsELA

Week of February 22^nd - February 26^th

I have known about NewsELA for about a year and a half now and in all honesty, I was really excited to integrate this app into my classroom. According to their website, “Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that's always relevant: daily news.” The app sure does not disappoint from my eyes. It is easy to use and great for the classroom. “Newsela makes it easy for an entire class to read the same content, but at a level that’s just right for each student.” That is why I love it! NewsELA is a great way to differentiate instruction and find a reading level that every student in the class can read from and feel great about themselves.

I used this app first and foremost during guided reading. This worked out wonderful because all of the guided reading groups were reading about the same news article, but they were reading on their Lexile level. I also integrated this app into our Free Centers rotation. This was not a huge success and left most of the students confused and asking me a lot of questions.

I think this app worked during guided reading but definitely did not work during Free Centers time. So with that observation, NewsELA received mixed results from the students. My third graders gave the app an overall average score of 3.05 when asked how much they liked this reading app. That did not really surprise me at all. When the students were asked if this app made them want to read more, the results were almost split down the middle. Twelve students said yes and ten students said no. For question three, when asked if the app made the students want to read more, the average score from this question was a 3.23. Once again, there was no surprise there in my opinion. I had some students who loved the app and some students who did not. The students also rated this app with the same score of a 3.23 for question four, when asked if the app made them see themselves as better readers. I was a little shocked by this since some of my students really struggled with the app. It made me feel glad that some of the students seemed to benefit from the app and it was not a total bust like I thought it had been. Lastly, fifteen students said they would use the app again and seven said they would not. I believe that if I used this app with my higher students in the guided reading setting that this would be most fitting for my students and would best fit my classroom needs.

As a teacher, I saw so many positives to this app. First and foremost, I love that this company has created an app. During student teaching, I used NewsELA a lot during guided reading. What was hard was that it was online. I would have to print out the passages and quizzes each week for the students. The app seems so much cooler and exciting compared to a packet of papers stapled together. What I absolutely love about this app is that the teacher can give each student an iPad and they can read about the same news article or event happening in the world in words that they can understand. The app can change the Lexile level so it is fitting for a child who can read at a second grade level or a twelfth grade level. NewsELA has many categories of articles like War & Peace, Science, Money, Law, Health, Arts, Kids, and Sports. The app also labels each article by a reading standard and the purpose of the article. For example, the article I used with my students focused on the reading standard Central Idea. I was able to use the nonfiction text and have the students work on an area that they are struggling to comprehend. What I also love about this app is that it has a quiz, with a writing prompt, that the students can answer. The app sends the teachers the results and you can even set it up so you can see a graph of the students’ scores and what Lexile level the students read at. Lastly, I love that the app turns daily news into a kid-friendly matter. This allows students to become more aware of the world around them. It is hard to find nonfiction texts that students respond to, but NewsELA does a really good job of it.

The biggest negative of this app in my opinion is that it is more of an educational tool than a “fun, reading app.” The students were engaged and interested in reading, but younger students- like my third graders- could not and did not want to use this app by themselves. It was a little overwhelming for them. Students also did not like how you could not highlight or zoom in on the words. Some of my students had a hard time tracking the words as they read from the iPad screen.

This app was not one where the students would want to go pick it up and read from it on a daily basis. For this app to work the best in the classroom it has to be used in a guided setting. Students were confused and struggled to use the app on their own. The biggest change that I would make the next time I use this app in my classroom is to only let them use it during guided reading or when a teacher can sit with them. It is not an app to use during Free Centers or Daily Five. Lastly, I feel that this app is more of an instructional tool instead of a fun and exciting app for the students. Teachers might like this app and find it more as an educational tool compared to a fun, reading app for their students.  

IXL

Week of February 15^th- February 19^th

This week’s app was called IXL. “IXL is an immersive K-12 learning experience that provides comprehensive, standards-aligned content for math, language arts, science, and social studies,” according to their website. It offers learning experiences for students from grades Pre-K to twelfth grade. IXL can be completed online or on their app. During student teaching, my students had worked on this program and seemed to like it, so I thought I would give it a try with my third graders this year. I seemed to get mixed results about this app. One student stated, “I like it but I can only practice a little. They ask too many of the same questions.” The way the app works is, in a way, like a game. You have to answer a certain number correct before you have successfully mastered the concept. This seemed to frustrate some of my students. 

For this app, I used it during I & E time. I & E time stands for interventions and enrichment. Since a lot of the topics covered on this app are ones that most of my students should know, I felt that this was the best time and best way to integrate this app into their daily schedule. This app can help the students to review old topics and work on new ones. 

Overall, I think the app was a miss with my third graders. When the students were given the survey, they responded with an average score of 2.73 for how much they liked- or didn’t like the app. Ten students said that the app made them want to read more and twelve students said that is did not make them want to read more. For the third question, the students were once again asked to what degree the app motivated them to read more. The students produced an average score of 2.77, which was also on the lower side. I asked one of my students why they thought that this app did not motivate them to read more and he replied, “It’s boring and no fun. It’s like a test!” To be honest, I think that most of the students saw this app in this way. For the fourth question, the app received an average score of 2. 86 on not changing the students’ perspective of themselves as readers. They felt that the app barely changed them into making them feel like better readers. Lastly, twelve students said they would use the app again and ten said they would not. From the results of this data, I truly believe this app received mixed reviews from my students.  

There were a few positives with IXL. The first part of the app that I liked as a teacher was that the app reviewed all the topics that third graders learn throughout the year regarding language arts. It looked at reading through a grammar perspective. I think IXL is a great app to use to review with the students. In retrospect, I don’t think it is a great app to build confidence in reading with. My students seemed to like that it gave them goals of how many questions that they had to answer to be considered proficient in that topic area. Also the questions had a feature where you could highlight and write all over the iPad which helped a few of my students.

IXL seemed to have more negatives than positives if you talked to my students. First, in my opinion, I would not consider this a “reading app.” It did not test them in fluency or give them questions to check their comprehension. IXL was very grammar based and to a lot of my students was like a test. They kept asking me if this was for a grade which I did not like. I also did not like how the app has a limited time. After answering a certain amount of questions, it logs you out and says that you have reached your daily practice limit. This was frustrating, especially for the students who liked the app and could benefit from reviewing these grammar topics.

Next time, I have decided that I am going to play around with the app a little more than I did with IXL. I decided that IXL should not have even been considered a reading app and if I would have looked more carefully, I might have been able to notice it before using it with my students. Also having apps that are similar to quizzes or tests will not help to increase my students’ desire or motivation to read. I need to be more careful next week before choosing my app to introduce to my students. 

EPIC!

Week of February 8^th- February 12th

This week I used the app called EPIC! with my students. From a teacher’s perspective, I really liked this app! Epic! provides an unlimited selection of E-books that can be read instantly. This app is one of the few apps that offers thousands of well-known and famous children’s books that students can easily access and read immediately. This website allows for teachers to create their own profile that creates a class where each student gets their own profile that is individualized just for them. This game-like app was created in order to get children to read instead of play video games with their electronics. It gives students a personal library that they can take anywhere with them. Truly a game changer app in the eyes of a teacher.

I used this app a lot throughout the day. On the first day, I helped show the students how to log in, create a profile, and answer the questions about the type of books that they liked. The students then had free access to this app whenever they wanted to read books from the app. I used the app during Daily Five time. They were allowed to read an E-book from the app during 'Read to Self' time. My students by day three were fighting over who got to read from an iPad, because they all wanted to. Students were also allowed to get an iPad and read from the app once they completed all their work. It gave them an incentive to finish their work and their reward was educational and fun!

As anyone can see from the surveys distributed to my students at the end of the week, my students absolutely loved this app. The average score for how much the students liked this app was a 4.45 out of 5. That is four and a half stars and for the score to be that high, the students must have really enjoyed it. When asked if this app makes the students want to read more, twenty-one students said yes and one student said no. This student was sick for two days so he only had three days with the app and one of those days consisted of filling out the interest survey. For question three, which asked the students how much this app motivated them to read, the average score was a 4.36 which is the highest average score yet! This made me excited and am going to find a way to use this app more in my classroom. For question four which asked if the app made them feel like a better reader, the average score was a 4.45, which means that they think the app helped them a lot! Last but not least, when the students were asked if they would read from this app again, twenty students said yes and two students said no. Overall, these scores rating this app were fantastic. One student even said to me, “Don’t make me stop reading! Actually don’t make me ever stop. I love this too much.” To me, that says it all.

There were a lot of positives with EPIC!. In my opinion, I absolutely loved this app and so did my students. I think the reason why is because this app creates a personal library just for you. First, it picks age appropriate books for each student. When you are creating a profile for each student, the students are asked to take a survey as they are making their profile. It allows them to pick out different genres and topics that they like to read about. Then the app creates a personal library that is just for that child. It recommends list of books that they think you might be interested in and list of books that go along with each genre or topic the student chose that they were interested in. Along, with all of these books, it gives the students titles of books that they can be chose to be read to. There are books that can be read to them, along with a list of audiobooks. Teachers can manage each child’s profile and see which books the student is reading. Once you click on a book to read, it tells you the title, author, how many pages, appropriate ages, a summary of the book, and the Lexile Measure. You can dim or brighten up the screen and you can track as you read. Each students’ profile will allow them to have different books and keep their place in the book they are reading. Once you begin to read, you tap the screen in a swiping motion, just as if you were turning the pages of a book. The app also will allow you to zoom in on the words, which is good for some of the struggling readers. A child can always change their preferences and search for certain books. This means that a class can all read one book together or read their own individually, picked out books. Another reason why this app was so successful was because the books on this app are great reads. They have well known books on this app, like The Boxcar Children series. Being a young and new teachers, I have a small supply of books in my classroom. This opens up a new and endless supply of books for my students. Lastly, I like this app because it rewards the students with badges on their profile. This was a hit with my class who is very competitive with one another. They were all trying to read to gain different badges. Overall, I would say EPIC! was a huge success with myself and my students.

There honestly were not that many negatives that my students or I noticed as we used this app. I do wish that the app was a little more interactive with the text. I wish that for each book the page could be read to you or that you could highlight the page as you go. Next, I wish they would provide some information on the authors of the books. I think this would be cool for the students to make those connections in their minds. The last negative of this app was that we had some difficulties setting it up. We had to set up our classroom multiple times and some students had to take the interest survey four or five times before it registered and worked on the iPads. Otherwise, besides these few hiccups along the way, I was very impressed with EPIC!.

This app will be used a lot in my classroom now. After seeing the students’ positive response with the app, I want to be able to continue using this app during Daily Five time. When students are finished early with their work, they are now allowed to grab an iPhone or an iPad and read from the EPIC! app. This motivates the students and they are getting to read a little more in school. I also sent out an email to my parents informing them of the app and their students’ profile. If they respond, I am giving them the information so they can download the app onto their child’s iPad or tablet at home so they can continue reading the books that they are starting to read in class from the app. I loved this app and cannot wait to continue to use it for the rest of the year!

Reading Comprehension Grades Third to Fifth from Peekaboo’s Studio.

Week of February 1^st- February 5^th

During Daily Five and guided reading this week, I implemented the app titled Reading Comprehension Grades Third to Fifth from Peekaboo’s Studio. On this free version of the app, it has six fiction and six non-fiction stories that students can choose to read and answer questions about the passage. I thought this would be a good app to implement and see how my students were doing with their reading comprehension skills.

I used this app during guided reading. The different guided reading groups chose one of the four fiction or nonfiction stories to read. They had to first read the passage to themselves. Then we would read the passage in a round robin fashion. Lastly, we would choral read the passage. The passages are short enough to be able to complete all of this in a short amount of time (which I loved). The students then had to answer the questions that correlated with the passage we read. This is how I integrated this app into my classroom.  

On Friday, I gave my students a survey to rate this app. Overall, this app was not really a success with my students. The students rated the app with an average score of 2.59 for question one which asked the students if they liked the app. They really did not seem to like this app. After I averaged the scores, I asked a few of them why they did not like the app and they responded with the fact that they thought it was super boring and not a lot of fun. It makes sense, especially when compared to last week’s app. When asking the students the second question, “Did this app make you want to read more?” eight students responded yes and fourteen responded no. After seeing that result, I knew that this app was going to receive low scores for the rest of the surveys. For the third question, the students gave the app a score of 2.36 for in increasing motivation, or should I say not motivating the students to read more at all. The fourth question asks the students if they think they are better readers because of this app. This question received an average score of 2.05, which bothered me because that means that they felt bad about themselves as readers because of this app. Lastly, the students responded with nine yeses and thirteen no’s for question five that asked if they would read from this app again. When looking at these results, I can see that this app was not successful with my students and one that I will not be using again with them.

There were a few positives that I really liked with this app. First, I loved how I could use this app for my classroom. Since there is such a large academic gap, I could use the different grade levels to help differentiate with my students. They could sit next to each other and read on the same app and they do not know which level they are each reading from. Another feature that was nice was that you can adjust font size to a larger text. This is nice for my students who have to track as they read. The best feature of this app is that it asks questions to check comprehension. Each passage asks twelve to thirteen questions that quizzes the students on their comprehension skills and vocabulary skills. A teacher can create student profiles for each child and the results of the quizzes can be sent directly to the teacher for each child. Also, it has both fiction and nonfiction texts for the students to read. This is a great addition to the app because starting in third grade, students really need to know and understand that you read fiction and nonfiction texts very differently. Lastly, if a child were to answer a question incorrectly, it highlight the sentence with the answer in it. This reminds the students that they should go back and reread if they are unsure of themselves.

For this app, I found a few more negatives or features that I did not like. First, the free version only has grade levels third to fifth. It also only has twelve books altogether for the students to pick from. This leaves only four passages depending on their grade level that they can read. I thought the passages were not very different from one another besides length. Longer texts, does not mean that they are for an upper grade level. I also thought that the differentiation between the different grade level passages were lacking in a few ways. The third grade texts were still very hard for some of my struggling readers and the fifth grade passages were still too easy for my higher readers. This app is aligned with Common Core State Standards, but does not tell you which standard which passage goes with. For a teacher, this is not really an ideal. My students and I also did not like that there were not many options. It gave them no choice when picking to read one of the text. Lastly, I think instead of giving the students the correct answer after they answer a question wrong, I think they should give students the option to find the correct answer. I love how it highlights where the answer could be found, but they should make it so the students could go back, reread the highlighted part, and answer the question correctly.

For next week, the change that I am going to make is to only use the reading app during guided reading instead of reading a book together too. I want to give them more time with the iPad and the app and see if this helps them to focus on the one text in front of them, instead of the two. For my struggling groups, this seemed to be much harder for them to bounce back between the two different texts. Hopefully, this will help my lower groups be able to concentrate more and do better with the next app!

News-O-Matic

Week of January 25th-January 29th

This week I introduced my students to the app called News-O-Matic. The app immediately had a very interesting effect on my students. All of my students wanted to be able to grab an iPad and read an article from the app. News-O-Matic is an educational daily news app for children that covers all the latest and current events happening in the world around us. The topics are written in a kid-friendly way and you can even change the language when you read the articles. News-O-Matic’s goal is to create ‘habitual’ readers who are being well-informed of the world around them. All of the articles in the app are reviewed by a child psychologist to ensure that the way the articles are written are appropriate and safe. Lastly, another addition to this app that makes it that much better is that it is interactive. Children can comment and write to the Editor-in-Chief, ask questions, and express themselves in the section of the app called the ‘News Room.’

I used this app during Daily Five. Students were allowed to use this app during 'Partner Reading.' They were allowed to sit EEKK (elbow to elbow, knee to knee) style and read the article of their choosing. This gave them time to discuss the article with their partner and understand it better. During Free Centers, some students wanted to read articles from the app. This app became a part of the Free Centers rotation giving them individual time reading from the app. News-O-Matic was a great addition to the Free Centers rotation and the students seemed to love being able to pick this from the list of apps to choose from.

To collect data on how these apps are being received in the classroom along with finding out if they are helping to increase the students’ motivation to read, I created a five question survey for the students to answer at the end of each week. I would say that overall, this app was a success. The students rated the app with an average score of 4.23 for question one which asked the students if they liked the app. I thought this score was pretty high considering it is out of a five point scale. When asking the students the second question, “Did this app make you want to read more?” eighteen students responded yes and four responded no. The third question, asked the students if they were motivated to read more because of the app. Again, the students responded with an average score of 4.05, which was once again, in my opinion pretty high. The fourth question asks the students if they think they are better readers because of this app. This question received an average score of 3.91 which shows that this app might have been a little challenging for a few of my students. Lastly, the students responded with eighteen yeses and four no’s for question five that asked if they would read from this app again. Overall, with these results, I think the majority of students really enjoyed this app and it motivated them to want to read more. I am surprised to see how this nonfiction reading app strategy has increased my students’ overall response towards reading.

News-O-Matic had a lot of positives, which made my students and myself love the app that much more. First, the length of the articles were perfect. They were not too long and not too short. By reading them, the students can definitely become more globally aware. News-O-Matic provides articles on all different types of topics like: sports, animals, U.S. news, around the world, wacky stories, discovery, and a few more. Another feature that I loved was the fact that with just a press of a button, the students could have the article read to them. I loved this features, especially for my students who struggle with reading. In the articles, difficult words are highlighted. If you were to press the difficult word, it tells the student how to say the word and what it means. Once again, this feature made my struggling readers not feel bad about themselves when they came to a word they did not know. Each article has videos, facts, and pictures to go along with them. This makes the article come to life for my visual learners. Each article also has some sort of interactive feature that allows the student to take their comprehension of the article to the next level. It could have to do with music, art, writing, or drawing which gives students a choice in their learning modalities of how they want to further their learning experience. The app also has a place where the students can ask questions and rate the article. This is important because it shows the students that their opinions are valued and important. There is another feature that allows the students to highlight to hold their thinking as they read, along with giving them the opportunity to save that article so they can come back to it at another time. News-O-Matic even has Spanish translation of the articles. This is a wonderful feature for my English Language Learners who can read in their first language. One of my students first read the article in English and checked himself by reading the article again in Spanish. He loved this feature of the app. Lastly, it has a world map of where the current event or article is from. This gives the students a better perspective of the world around them and where this story took place.

There were a few negatives or changes that I would make for News-O-Matic. The biggest change that I would like the app to implement would be to ask two or three questions at the end about comprehending and understanding the material covered in the article. This would be good for me to see if they are truly understanding what they are reading about or whether the article was too hard/easy for them. Another negative of this app is that at first it can seem a little overwhelming. There are a lot of pictures and took the students a few minutes to learn how to navigate the app. Lastly, I wish that this app specified the target grade or reading level of the text. For a few students, some articles seemed to be either too challenging or too easy for them. All in all, I feel like this app has few flaws and as seen from the scores that the children rated it, I think they agree too.

For next week, I want to be able to find more time to use the iPads and apps, besides during Daily Five time and the literacy block. Due to snow, we missed out on one day with this app, but surprisingly that did not seem to affect the scores that the students rated on this app. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy using this app and as a teacher, I definitely saw it have an impact on my students and their motivation to read. They wanted any chance that they could get to read an article from News-O-Matic. Hopefully next week, the students will be able to use the new app and try it out even more. 

Implementation of Different Apps and How it Impacts Student Motivation to Read

INTRO- COMPLETE EXPLAIN PROJECT

Survey

Name of App: __________________________

On a scale of 1-5 (1 being not liking it at all, 3 neutral, and to 5 loving it):

How much did you like this app?

1                      2                      3                      4                      5

Did this app make you want to read more?

Yes                              No

On a scale of 1-5 (1 not at all, 3 no change, and to 5 a lot more):

Did this app motivate you to want to read more?

1                      2                      3                      4                      5

On a scale of 1-5 (1 not at all, 3 no change, and to 5 a lot more):

Does this app make you feel like you are a better reader?

1                      2                      3                      4                      5

Would you like to read from this app again?

Yes                              No