iPad in the ELL Classroom
Duolingo
An addictive app that starts students at basic words all the way through various verb tenses and abstract ideas. Students can test out of different levels if they are more advanced. Can learn English from Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. It lets you translate both ways, ie. English to Spanish and Spanish to English. Student input is varied from speaking, typing, or answering multiple choice. The app also reads the words and sentences to students. It's motivational because it gives you points and stars as you move up the levels.
Tellagami
Create short animations with an avatar using your own voice or type in text and let the app talk for you! If they use the type feature, they are able to have an authentic writing experience because they will be able to hear if their sentences sound correct. Then they can make the necessary additions, deletions, modifications. Students could even pull in a picture from their camera roll for the background of the gami. Tellagami would be a great way to practice storytelling or just speaking in general. The 30 second limitation makes it less intimidating for students. They could practice their reading fluency, tell a summary of a story, Would also be great for character traits! This app serve as a "blank slate" for us to simply create (for or with students) products that can target all manner of skills: academic language, concepts and vocabulary, narrative, expository text, sentence structure or social cognition. It all depends on what you ask the students to do.
Student Examples & Instructions
Sock Puppets
It can be used to briefly record a student speaking or reading in class, or even to have two or three students record a simple play (the free app allows thirty seconds of recording while for 99 cents you can upgrade to 90 seconds). One major advantage of using this for speaking practice is that it’s the sock puppet that’s actually speaking on the display, not the student. Students could explain a vocabulary word
Student example & Instructions
Multiplayer game that eliminates the isolation that is often felt by ELL students. Students compete with each other to be the first to identify an image. With ELL students, images are extremely useful in helping students learn new words. With the paid version, teachers can uploade images of their own which would be perfect for tailoring the game to a specific unit or lesson.