Getting iPad Centers Started with Felt Board app

I am in love with the Felt Board app!  It is such a versatile tool for illustrating and creating stories, building words, and showing math equations.

Here are some examples of how we used the Felt Board app in kindergarten.  After students created a project in Felt Board, they would save it to their camera roll and post on their Kidblog or put into a Book Creator book.  That way, I could see their work and we could share it with their parents and other classes.

(My favorite thing was iPads.)

Today, I visited Mr. Anderson's 1st grade classroom and introduced the Felt Board app whole group. Using Reflector, I could show the students the app and how to navigate it.  I began by giving them some time to play. I wanted them to figure out the features of the app, how to add, delete, resize, etc, before giving them a task.

After they had some time to play and make pictures, I chose a few to share.  I then showed them how they could use the app to build words.  We used the background shown above and the letter pieces to build words from the -at family.  Once they finished this, they could build other word family words as instructed by the teacher.  After each task, they took a picture of their work and saved to their camera rolls.  The next step will be teaching them to post these to their Kidblogs!

When the students go to Mr. Anderson's iPad center, they will see Felt Board as a choice with some specific learning tasks.  Students will be instructed to build words, illustrate a story, retell a story, etc, depending on Mr. Anderson's learning objective(s).  Because they will learn how to post their work on Kidblog, he will be able to check their learning later, to see how they did and make sure they stayed on task.

In my iPad center, I put app icons on magnets and place them onto a magnetic board.  This allowed me to easily move them around, depending on what I wanted the students to do that day.  I could also add specific tasks, for example, if they were working on the app Letter School, I would write which letters I wanted them to practice on the whiteboard beside the magnet.  If you want a copy of the app icons that I used in my kindergarten class, click here.  I printed them on cardstock, laminated and stuck to a small adhesive magnet to the back so I could easily move them around on my whiteboard.