Professional Learning Goals

• Identified, explored and tested specific apps and online games which are designed to support students’ literacy skills
• Organized most useful apps and online games in a teacher-friendly manner based on target age, student entry point and outcome goals (fluency, decoding, comprehension, etc.)
• Built capacity within our classroom teachers to be able to use these tools effectively within their classroom program

Activities and Resources

• Research literacy-focused websites and apps available for iPad download (free and purchase)
• Audit websites and apps to determine if they meet the needs of our students
• Organize the most useful websites and apps based on target age, student entry point and outcome goals
• Test what we have determined to be the most useful websites and apps on a small group of struggling readers (one group in primary, another in junior special education) to see if they can help improve decoding and comprehension skills
• Reflect on successes and struggles, and refine tools’ use and how we used them
• Develop a guide for teachers within our school to use these tools in their classrooms
• Host lunch-and-learns for teachers to help get them started with the tools
• Support teachers in class during provided release time (e.g., model, work with students, answer teacher questions, and work through challenges and concerns)

Unexpected Challenges

• The overabundance of apps and games available and advertised as a “literacy tool”
• Apps and games that are advertised as being “free” but are either not useful or are limited until you upgrade to a full paid membership
• Difficulties with limited access for “try before buy”
• Full school (or class) licences are prohibitively expensive and must be renewed annually
• Issues with updating technology and managing data usage and data sharing
• Navigating the administrative processes (e.g., supply codes, release requirements, etc.)

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

• Students were more engaged and motivated in learning activities when presented with literacy apps and games on the iPads
• Students were more likely to persevere when challenged by an activity within one of the selected programs while using the iPad
• Students who in the past had not shown leadership qualities became more self-confident as a result of their technological skills and were often asked by peers for support
• Teachers found that the introduction of these apps and games led to discussions around internet safety, media awareness, and general good practices when using technology at school and at home

Sharing

• Regular updates at monthly division meetings
• In-class modelling and support for teachers as we developed our program
• Email updates to colleagues and admin as new apps and games were vetted and approved for use within classroom instruction and centres
• Contributing to our school’s “Healthy School committee” on-going lunch-and-learns by highlighting student success and growth and sharing useful tools we had found for classroom use

Project Evaluation

We feel that our project was overall a success. After a lot of sifting, evaluating and testing, we have found a handful of very useful apps and games that have contributed towards the development of our students’ decoding and comprehension skills. We’ve measured individual student success with monthly running records, guided reading groups, DRA, and anecdotal notes and observations. We have observed that as our students’ decoding and comprehension skills have developed, their overall attitudes towards reading are more positive and there is less resistance to read on the part of our struggling learners. Within the special education classroom, students who previously struggled with self-confidence and initiative demonstrated improvements in those areas as their reading skills developed.

Looking back, we feel like it would have been useful to use more of the release time at the beginning of the project to do a larger portion of the research and planning before we began implementing in our program in the classroom. We initially underestimated the amount of time it would take to not just source the apps and games but become familiar enough with them to properly use them in the class and share them with our colleagues. If we were to have this opportunity again, we would make sure to schedule bi-monthly release time to connect, reflect and plan.