Assignment 6

An educational software application that I feel would be a useful tool in the classroom is Stack the States by Dan Russel-Pinson, which can be found in both iTunes and Google Play. This is a fun, and really cute, drill and practice tool for the areas of social studies and geography. The basic game drills students on state names, shapes, capitals, flags and other information and giving the correct answer gives you that state to stack with other states to reach a goal line. It gives students an awareness of how large or small the states really are in comparison to one another and after reaching the goal line, students are rewarded with a state to place on their map. As students earn states, they unlock other games within the app such as Puzzler, which gives you a blank US map to fill in like a jigsaw puzzle. I adore this app simply because all the games in it are so fun, students won’t even realize that they are learning!

A useful website for early readers in Pre-K through 2nd grade is Starfall.com. It is a fun, interactive site that teaches and reinforces phonics skills. Students simply click and follow prompts to read stories or the website can read the stories aloud for them. The stories are accompanied by vibrant pictures that come to life when the student clicks on them, keeping students actively engaged. If a student gets stuck on a word they cannot pronounce, simply clicking on the word will highlight it and the site will slowly sound out each syllable and then put it all together. With many different stories to choose from and a variety of other language rich activities on the site, I believe that Starfall is a wonderful and valuable tool for all early classrooms.