Math Bingo

Fun with math for Kindergarten through Grade Three, Math Bingo ($.99) by ABCya.com, motivates children to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with five Bingo games. The games range in content level from easy to difficult. Bingo Bugs are given as rewards; a scoreboard displays student scores.  Three bonus games come with the app. According to a review in Education World, Math Bingo “is a great app to supplement regular math lessons.”

iTunes Virtual Field Trips

Open new worlds of knowledge by going to iTunes Virtual Field Trips. There, you’ll find “trips” to museums, historic sites, historic site apps, National Parks, National Parks apps, Libraries, Library apps, Performing Arts, and Performing Arts apps. There are Mummy Chamber videos from the Brooklyn Museum, Musee du Louvre HD app ($2.99), Beyond New York Sight (audio, Manhattan), Garden Grounds New York Botanical Garden (free, audio/video), Guggenheim app (free), Smithsonian Mobile app (free), National Parks by National Geographic app (free), Treasures of the New York Public Library (audio), Today’s Document from the National Archives app (free), MoMA Audio: Kids (free), A Jazzy Day: Music Education Book for Kids app ($4.99), and much more. By the way, A Jazzy Day has garnered great reviews.

Kick Start Your SchoolYear by iTunes

The iTunes Store has compiled an extensive list of apps that will help you and your students become better organized and productive, in addition to increasing knowledge.  Included are reading and writing apps for all ages, apps for organization, and apps for math, science, history, geography, and art and creativity. So—as the new school year is about to begin, you’ll want to browse through the offerings (free and for-pay) in the Kick Start for the School Year section of iTunes.

Headstrong Nation: Dyslexic Community

The site, Headstrong Nation, provides help to the world’s largest disability group—those with dyslexia. It includes videos, books, and other resources for those with dyslexia and those working with those with dyslexia. You’ll find information on classroom accommodation tools and mapping children’s dyslexia. The fact section features information such as: 35% of American entrepreneurs are dyslexic, there are many different ways to read, being dyslexic does not mean those who have it are slow learners or stupid, dyslexia is not something anyone outgrows, and boys and girls are just as likely to be dyslexic. The mapping feature encourages parents and teachers to assess children’s strengths and attitudes by using the assessment survey provided. Areas used for mapping are Visual, Kinesthetic, Spatial, Narrative, Social, Verbal, Musical, and Mathematical/Scientific.  Resources available on the site help parents and students learn to use technologies to help with learning, learn to understand the world of dyslexics and those with attention deficit disorders, and learn to understand how disabilities affect family dynamics.

The Importance of Empathy in our Lives

Think of how empathy can thrive in your classroom and take action to grow. According to author Homa Tavengar, in the Edutopia piece Empathy: The Most Important Back-to-School Supply, “Empathy isn’t just a nice thing to do; it’s an essential, active skill.” It helps us understand what it’s like to step into someone else’s life and problems. Tavangar likens empathy to a muscle, which develops with exercise—with practice.  Children in our classrooms need to grow well-developed empathy muscles so that the compassion, altruism, and empathy that lie within them can mature.  The author recommends following the program “Start Empathy”, by Ashoka, that features a “three-step fitness plan to build the empathy muscle.”

So—instead of talking about bullies and cyberbullies, why not focus on those atrophied empathy muscles that need to be exercised?  It may be the best cure to growing school and online problems.

Good Listeners Are Successful Students

Tales2Go and eSchool News offer the whitepaper, Listening, the 21^st Century Learner, and the Common Core Standards. According to the paper, a good listener is not necessarily one who sits quietly or keeps eyes focused on a lecturer or storyteller; it’s one who understands. Students who are good listeners are those who understand skills and how to use them. Good listeners know how to participate in conversations and to “reflect on what they’ve heard.”

Students with reading difficulties profit from listening to audio books—audio books allow teachers to differentiate instruction. But, where do Common Core Standards come in? They offer “a ‘staircase’ of increasing complexity for the student as he strives to comprehend more and more of what a book provides.” Students are better able to achieve the goals of Common Core if they have been exposed to audio versions of fiction and non-fiction stories. There is a lot to be said about learning through listening, especially when it comes to modeling human voices that are fluent in reading.

Free Scholastic Reading Timer

It’s often difficult to turn students on to reading. When parents tell me they can’t get their children to read, I often suggest that they require their children to read as much as they play video games or watch television. A new app from Scholastic may help as well. It tracks children’s reading minutes, provides a weekly log, and offers book lists, tips, and articles about children and reading for parents.  The Timer motivates children to have fun reading every day.

The Scholastic Reading Timer app works with iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone, Android devices, and Windows phones.

Memories of Today and the Future

The app To Me, By Me ($1) lets students email their future selves. They can choose to receive an email in as little as a month or in several years. Using the app, students think about what memories they want to preserve. The memories can be text, images, and audio recordings.  The company that produced To Me, By Me also has apps for journals and daily diaries.

Hollywood’s STEM Connections

Texas Instruments (TI) together with the Science & Engineering Exchange,  a program of the National Academy of Sciences has created STEM BEHIND HOLLYWOOD. The program, which features free STEM activities for students, is available for use on TI-Nspire CX handhelds, TI-Nspire Teacher and Student Software, and TI-Nspire Apps for iPad.  With the program, your students will learn about the science and math behind Hollywood’s depictions of superheroes, zombies, space travels, and forensics. Available now is the STEM OF THE LIVING DEAD or the Zombie Apocalypse. Students take on what brings zombies to life as they investigate a Zombie disease that is spreading throughout the world.

Sign up for email updates to learn about future volumes in STEM BEHIND HOLLYWOOD.

Splash Math

For students, up to Grade 5, Splash Math offers activities that make math fun to practice and easy to learn. There’s Learn Money for ages 4-9, Splash Math Kindergarten with its HD graphics and “titillating animal sounds”, Telling Time for ages 4-9, a back-to-school workbook for Grades 1-5, Summer Review Math workbook, and Splash Math Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4, and Grade 5.  The lighter versions of the apps are free; the complete or full ones are priced at $4.99-$9.99.