Using Tech with Little Ones

I know this is a controversy among many people. There are so many comments, especially on social media about how Kindergarten students go home and are on screens so maybe they shouldn't spend time on that in schools.

I disagree. We have a responsibility to teach students how to use technology to create, to play, to learn and to write. Young kids are easily engaged with tech and it teaches them skills they will need for their entire academic careers. All of our standardized testing is online-if they never learn how to navigate it, how will they be successful.

How do you do this with little ones?

*Digital Stories-there are several apps like Book Creator that allow students to write and draw. We do stories for fairy tales-they write their own and also for Mother's Day they write about their moms.

Differentiation-I LOVE Pear Deck! The paid version allows you to record and I use this often with my students. I make one version for kids struggling with letters and sounds and one version that's a little more challenging for my advanced kiddos. I have digital activities that I bought during covid and I use reading a-z readers. 

Blooket-I used this even with my Kinder students! I would make up games to review concepts we were learning or just for fun I would make up questions about how well they know me as well as how well they know their classmates. Who is an only child? Who love unicorns? For my advanced students I would let them make up the blooket game. Not only did this help foster typing skills but also critical thinking but coming up with wrong answers helps them learn how to navigate multiple choice questions they will see in the future. 

This was a student created game. They were so excited to play it!

An example of how to practice decoding skills with it-most were cvc words-mad, sad

Math-fill in the missing number

They even practice typing and spelling by choosing a name.

So technology can go beyond the daily reading and math apps! Even with the younger kiddos. I am always amazed at what they can do but they are growing up in a digital era. :)