Apps for Your Primary Classroom - 17th

Our 16th post about apps we've made use of, that others may like to try too. The other posts can be found here. Again, the links below are to Apple's App Store. This is because we use iOS devices in school. Many of these apps are available on Android too. 

 Image credit: www.apple.com

ENGLISH 

Lipogram
reVerb
Teach Your Monster to Read - Phonics and Reading
Winning Words apps
Word Mess

GENERAL
Attenborough Story of Life
Expeditions
Gravity Sketch
Pettson's Inventions
Phoetic

REBUS - Absurd Logic Game
The DAILY MONSTER Monster Maker 

MATHS

Maths Rockx - Times Tables

VIRTUAL REALITY

CoSpaces
Jurassic Virtual Reality (VR)
Ultimate Sharks Free

5 Gold Rings in Class

Have you been watching ITV's new quiz show, '5 Gold Rings'? It's great, we really like it. Watched the first episode, shouted at the TV, discussed (little left, bit down, bit more up...) and decided we'd watch again. Then, second episode, we discovered the app - we could play too while watching the contestants! Then, of course (like we do), we thought of a way to get it into class...

The uses are endless. Here's how it works: there's a picture of something with part missing or covered up. The person playing the game has a ring and needs to predict where something is. For example, finding the number 4 on this clock face:

Print out the picture with a missing part on paper, provide children with a pen and something circular and ask them to draw a circle where they thing the target is located. To allow children to check their work, have the answer printed on a piece of OHT paper that they can lay over their answer to see how they did. 

                 Guess                                                                  Compared to Answer

Both, Side by Side

As I said, the opportunities for this are endless. But, here are some example questions and answers. Included there are: the clock face shown above, 'find Northern Ireland', 'locate the amber traffic light' and 'Where's the top of the A?'.

Could Papa, Actually Get The Moon?

At the weekend, I watched an animation of 'Papa, Please Get The Moon For Me' for the first time. As I watched it with my own children at home, it struck a chord with me as my class are currently studying a unit in science about the Earth, Sun, Moon and our Solar System. So, today, I played the animation for my class. After I'd played it, I played it a second time and asked the children to write down anything in the video they thought was fictional rather than scientific fact.

In future years, I might use this task as a pre and post assessment. What do they think is fictional before some teaching and then afterwards. Nice story, nice animation and some good science learning...

Slow / Fast Motion Video Task

Again some inspiration from the TV series Taskmaster. We've had success in the past with the 'Backwards Video Task'. In the most recent series, the contestants were asked to film something that when sped up or slowed down made it more interesting or amusing.

Again like before, use it as a group work and/or ICT task. Both iMovie and Movie Maker allow speeding up or slowing down a clip and apps can be purchased to do the same too.

Twitter for Parts of Speech

Find a Tweet or two (with no swearing or major punctuation/grammar errors*) and ask the children to identify the parts of speech contained in it. They'll be short texts as they've got to be within 140 characters.

  In this example, I found a Tweet with the word 'stamp' in it:

Have this random stamp on my arm and I don't know where how or when I got it

— Colin Bergin (@colinbergin360) 18 March 2017

Here's another...

Ethan was bouncing a basketball around smiling softly to himself "This is fun." He looks up throwing the ball in the hoop

— Ethan (@Cute_KidE) 30 January 2017

* It's a challenge!  

You could even write your own, or get the children to. 

The Story of the Rugby Match

In rugby (union and league), points are earned in various different ways during a game. 

Here's the scoring system in rugby union:

- try, 5 points (and then the opportunity to kick a conversion for 2 points);

- penalty, 3 points;

- drop goal, 3 points (not frequent).

So, looking at a scoreline from a game, can pupils work out how the teams achieved the scores they have? These could be mid-game (like the ones below), full time or even fictional.

@PrimaryIdeas @alanpeat @gareth_metcalfe @PrimaryRocks1 @gazneedle @dughall in RL 4pts try 2 for conversion or penalty and 1 for drop goal

— Mark Boylan (@ictlinks) 23 March 2017

Are all scorelines possible? Can any scores only be gained in one way?

@PrimaryIdeas could also compare scores between codes, what would the score line be in the other code?

— Mark Boylan (@ictlinks) 23 March 2017

The Shoe Shop is Open

Here's an idea to help with those practical lessons. Particularly art, DT and so on...
 

You know, sewing where half the class want their needle rethreading, DT where everyone needs to use the glue gun and similar occurrences.

It uses the system I first came across as a child in Clarks. You go in the shop, take a ticket with a number on and then wait. In an orderly fashion, those with tickets are seen. The shop assistant decides when they next see someone.

In the classroom, put up five Post-It Notes with the numbers 1-5 on them. If someone needs help from the teacher, they take a number and see what else they can get on with. In order, the teacher calls out which number they will see next (in a "Cashier number 4 please" voice of course!). When the child has been seen, they put their number back for someone else to use. If there are more than one adult in the room, each adult has their own coloured Post-It.

It works quite well. Give it a go.