Compare & Contrast with Feltboard App!

One of my most favorite apps (besides Seesaw, of course) is this Feltboard app. It seems like a really simple app, but there are so many learning activities that students can creatively complete using it. It's not a free app, but I would definitely say it's worth the $2.99 cost. I have used it for art, writing, math and science concepts. Read more to see how we used it in Mrs. Johnson's first grade to compare and contrast characters from the story The Tortoise and the Hare!

In the Wonders curriculum, a first grade skill is to compare and contrast stories. There are so many ways you could do this using the Feltboard app, but today we wanted to use a Venn diagram to guide students through comparing and contrasting the title characters of The Tortoise and the Hare.

To begin, we opened the Feltboard app and students selected the Venn diagram background (scroll very close to the bottom). I really love using these graphic organizer backgrounds in Feltboard to help students organize their thoughts.

Once they selected the background, they filled in the settings and characters using Feltboard pieces. We also had them add their names to practice using the letters (and decipher the capitals and lower cases).

Once this was done, students clicked the camera button to take a picture and save their work to the camera roll of the iPad. We could then add these to Seesaw by uploading from the camera roll, and we could annotate over top of the Feltboard pictures to add more of their comparisons by using the Drawing tool in Seesaw.

We modeled whole class using Reflector, and help students sound out the words. They then opened the microphone tool and used their voice to record the words that they wrote.

The finished projects turned out great! This idea could be adapted for any story, and different graphic organizers could be used for retellings, comparisons, etc. Once you have practiced these whole group a few times, they would make a great center activity for your students. Here is a finished example of one of the projects: