Disappointing Apps!

I have to say, I was disappointed in my first iPad app that I used with my first grade babies.  I was planning on using an app to practice syllable recognition with a student who was in need of intervention due to failure of his DIBELS test.  I found a syllable app on my iPad called Syllable Counter and was really excited to practice this skill with my students, but when I played with it myself before bringing it to them, I was highly disappointed.  I guess this is a perfect case for the saying "you get what you pay for".  The ratings and reviews for it seemed like it would be a great game, however, I felt it was terrible.  I saw it being of no benefit to my students and decided against using this app at all.

Instead of giving a word for you to count the syllables, it tells you how many syllables there should be and you create the word.  I am disappointed in this because it is much more complex than it lets on and definitely isn't first grade level.

Instead, I used Doodle Buddy where I wrote a word on my own, and then the student would break the word into parts and tell me how many syllables were in the word.  As you can see below, this was a much more fun way to practice syllables using our touch-screen white board.

I also used Doodle Buddy this week to practice blends with other students.  We have been working on PR, TR, DR, and FR blends, so I would tell them a blend, and they would either write a word or draw/stamp a picture of a word with the designated blend.  We made it into a fun game and really enjoyed it!

To extend our work on blends and diagraphs, I found a really neat app called Artikpix.  It is an app that shows flash-cards with a word that has a specific diagraph, blend, or sound and a picture to match.  If you tap the flash-card, it will read you the word.

We turned this into a game where the students had to say which diagraph or sound was heard in the word.  If they were right, they got a point and the student with the most points in the end won!  This app is a little disappointing as well because most of the sounds are locked, and all we could access was the TH cards because you must pay for the rest.