Aloha friends! I hope everyone had a decent Monday. I know that they are not always great, lol! Just a quick post today to share with you how I am using my iPads in the classroom. Yes, I said iPads! This year I received my first iPad through a Donor's Choose project. I love it! Not only for the students but for myself. I started with using it at our listening center. I downloaded the Storia App from Scholastic and it was an instant listening device. All the kids fought for it for the first few weeks, but after awhile they learned how to take turns and knew when they would get to use it next. I also used it for math games for early finishers Well last week our principal handed out iPads for the whole staff! It was all set up for us by our Computer teacher and we have access to iTunes and You Tube at school! Yay!! We also received this little baby so I can hook it up to my projector and display it to the whole class! Since I have two iPads now I decided to place those two in our Word Work station during our Daily 5. My kids love the centers I make and purchase and would not give those up, but there are so many great apps that I wanted to try. So I learned how to make folders on my iPad so that they would know what apps they could play. Here are some of their favorites that I see them playing. Endless ABC is just adorable and there are great vocabulary words on there. Here is another favorite My smarties like this one and so do I. They have to try to make as many words as possible in 3 minutes with certain letters. Rocket Speller is cute too, and it's a great way to get your struggling spellers to engage and practice. Some of the other apps that are on there are Grammar Wonderland, Phonics Genius, Spelling Magic, Spell Animals, Sight Words and Spelling City. My kids cannot wait to get to Word Work! My rules are they can only use the iPad once per week to make sure we all get a chance. So I usually have two friends on iPads and two who are doing other activities during this rotation. Last week you could have heard a pin drop in my classroom during Daily 5. Everyone was so engaged, that I was wishing my admin would walk in and see what was happening! All of the above apps were Free when I downloaded them. I have not spent any money on classroom apps yet. I have also downloaded these Math Apps for my early finishers during math time. Many are just basic addition subtraction practice games. I love Sudoku games and they have a kids version that is great for this level. I have Math Quiz Game Show on my computer that I bought from Lakeshore. I love that they have an app for it and for free. It's a lot like Jeopardy and more than one student can play. I also like Sushi Monster from Scholastic. It is definitely higher level for your Math Smarties. Just a word of warning there are lots of free apps out there, but read the reviews and test them out. Many are just advertising for paid apps. I am lucky to have my daughters to be able to play and tell me what they think before we use them in class. Do you have iPads in your classroom? What are your favorite ways to use them and what apps would you recommend?