iLiveGrammar Winter

iLiveGrammar Winter
by iHomeEducator

Being that I live in the Northeastern part of the United States and winters are usually difficult, as a teacher I am constantly hearing my colleagues say, “How am I going to fit in X, Y and Z? With all these snow days, there just isn’t enough time.”  The solution to this problem….. combine curricular areas into one and iHomeEducator is doing just that by developing apps as it relates to grammar, math, and science.

Todays review is specifically on iLiveGrammar Winter. It seemed fitting with all the unfortunate snow that we have received since the New Year 🙂   It is my hope that in the coming months, that a team of teachers and I will write a grant with the intent of getting iPads in our school.  It is my mission to find appropriate applications that can be implemented to teach, reinforce and guide those struggling learners.  I believe I have found it in iHomeEducator.

As you enter iLiveGrammar Winter series, you immediately notice the amazing photographs.  Within this series there are 4 levels of learning.  Lesson 1: Nouns and Verbs, Lesson 2: Adjectives and Adverbs, Lesson 3: Nouns, Conjunctions, & Prepositions, Lesson 4: Review.  This app can be applied in so many ways in the classroom.

Scenario 1 – if you have iTouches, students can either be paired together or work individually depending on the number of iTouches.  Grouping can be based on the type of lesson that each group requires.  A classroom could have multiple lessons occurring at one time.  Keyword here is differentiated instruction.  The user(s) are given a sentence and one word is highlighted in yellow.  By clicking on the question mark, students should select what type of part of speech the highlighted word is and click done.  A reinforcement box will indicate if they selected the correct answer.  As they continue in that lesson, you will notice in the upper right hand corner a recording sheet of how the user is doing.  A nice feature which can guide further instruction for the teacher as well as educational indicators for a parent which can be emailed to the necessary parties.  These reports are details explaining the sentence that was presented, which word was highlighted and how they responded (right or wrong).  Nice touch!!!

You might also notice  a TV icon, this is a reward or incentive for the user.  Within the iTouch or iPad’s settings you can set when these incentives appear within the application.  What are the incentives you might ask?  They are scientific and topic related based on the iHomeEducator series- for this app the focus is on Winter. So there will be links to such things as: winter solstice, polar bears, snowflake, precipitation and winter storms.  You will also notice that the sentences are topic related as well to winter.  Through development of parts of speech and the implementation of science, teachers are now opening up additional conversations and discussions.  Not only can student answer the specific questions, but as they earn incentives they could have a What Did You Learn? sheet so that they are held accountable for their learning while enjoying the science curriculum.

Scenario 2: if you have iPads in your classroom this also lends nicely to a classroom setting.  Connect your iPad to a VGA adapter and work as a group with the LCD projector.  Use the iLiveGrammar Winter series as a way to enter into a particular topic such as parts of speech and those science topics.

I was truly impressed with the unlimited amount of sentences that are stored within this app.  Each time a student returns, the experience can be different.  There appeared to be very little repetition of sentences.  I happen to iLove this application and intend to share it with my colleagues.  If you too would like to learn more about iHomeEducator be sure to visit them here.  Or you can go to iTunes and begin downloading the various series today!