Soft Technology

The wait is over! Teach Your Monster to Read is free to download across all app stores this week! From today (Monday March 4th) to Sunday March 10th, you can download the app completely free. Once downloaded, there is no subscription cost or in-app purchase after the free download period ends. Are you ready to go on an adventure? Three, two, one... let's go! apple.co/2s8oX0b   (iPad & iPhone) http://bit.ly/2cohkeR   (Android) http://amzn.to/2lNa0xS   (Kindle Fire)  K-2 BPS teachers, submit a help ticket to have this app installed on your classroom iPads!

I have curated tons of Collections on the Participate site to help teachers find good iPad apps and other resources for specific tasks. You can see all of the Collections I have created at bit.ly/PiltzCollections. They are a work in progress, continuously updated as I discover more great tools!

Allowing our youngest learners access to technology is so important in today's classrooms. These students are digital natives, and many are using tablets and other devices each day in their homes. Teaching them how to use these devices as tools to create, make and do (rather than just play and watch) can be important part of their day. I loved providing my kindergartners with access to iPads as a way to document their learning, take pictures of their creations, and share their voices as they told me stories or read books aloud. Publishing this work to an authentic audience and sharing with parents was a beloved and essential part of our routine in kindergarten. Teachers often ask me what some of my favorite apps to use with young learners (K-2) are. Here is a list of my Top 5 Favorites. You can see a more extensive list in this P articipate Learning Collection . Seesaw This digital learning journal has embedded tools and allows students to publish both digital and physical work to...

Deana Elder just purchased many licenses for these awesome math apps gone free. If any Billings Schools teachers would like these apps installed on their iPads, they just need to complete a Help Ticket! SmartCards+ Flashcards System Math Rescue Games For Rounding Animal Math First Grade Games Also, don't forget the growing collection of Math Apps in my Participate Collection!

Check out this great FREE app from Greg Tang, author of The Grapes of Math . Ten Frame Mania is the latest Greg Tang Math game! Play it to learn and exercise your number sense. It helps you understand the cardinality of numbers, how to play with them, and how the different numbers work together. It’s concept is so simple, yet addictive and fun!

See, Learn and Talk is a unique application to facilitate speech and language development in young children. An experienced and certified Speech-Language Pathologist who has been working with children for 20 years has designed this application in order to provide concrete support for language development to parents, fellow speech and language therapists, ABA therapists, educators and Teachers of Speech and Language Disabilities. Billings teachers, submit a help ticket to have this app installed on your iPads for FREE!

The FREE app Draw & Tell is an absolute favorite for letting students tell stories and explain things they know in a fun, engaging and creative way. Students are able to use stickers, drawing, voice and even add their own photo as a background. I love the moveable stickers for telling math stories or making characters move. The images or videos easily save to Seesaw to share with others. Check out some of these fun creations from Mrs. Parisien's first graders, who just learned Draw & Tell today! After using Draw & Tell, your students may also be interested in the Duck Duck Moose apps Princess FairyTale Maker and Superhero Comic Book Maker . BOTH FREE!

Check out this great collection of FREE math apps for young learners! Variety of apps to help students practice number sense, greater than, less than, equal parts, measurement, and much more!

Click the image to download a PDF.

There are several fun, free Christmas tree apps for your iPad that allow students to be creative and decorate their own Christmas trees. Use these apps for math problems: Have them create arrays or simple equations on the trees using the ornaments, then put into Seesaw or another app to annotate, solve and explain their thinking. You could also have them create illustrations for stories and upload to apps such as Seesaw, Shadow Puppet Edu , or  Book Creator , where they can add text and voice.

Click the image to download a PDF.

Teach Your Monster to Read is a wonderful, engaging program that motivates children to learn the basics of reading. It features a variety of levels for pre-K and kindergarten students, and would be helpful for beginning of year 1st graders and struggling readers as a "boost". Continue reading to see how to use this tool in your classroom. Create a teacher account for FREE online at Teach Your Monster to Read . You can add your students - it will create a star code and password for each student. You can also set which level you want each student to begin at. Click here to view the game levels. They will need this information to login to your class account. The online version is FREE, and students can access it from computers or Chromebooks. The iPad app is $4.99 , but Billings Public Schools teachers are super lucky, as the app went free for a short amount of time last spring and the amazing Deana Elder bought licenses for BPS teachers to use in their classrooms. So if you...