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.