The First Steps on Our iPad Journey...

There has been a bit of a buzz of excitement in my classroom recently... a box was delivered marking the arrival of our class iPad. It was almost overwhelming having to decide where to begin putting this tool to use with my class. I scoured the app store and ibookshelves for inspiration for our reading activities and discovered the National Geographic Explorer magazine...

As our topic is endangered animals this term it was the perfect place to begin introducing the iPad to the children. The first reading groups found out about lemurs and the second groups investigated poisonous animals.

The iPad allowed the children in my class to discover information in a really interactive way. With a simple tap the snakes would come to life and videos of lemurs "singing" captured their imagination. They tackled challenging words like poisonous, venomous, ferocious, exoskeleton and paralysis without batting an eyelid - simply because they had to find out about these wierd and wonderful creatures.

The most striking result was the amount of questions the children were asking, not the adult, but each other. They excitedly re-read the text through to shed light on the questions they were being asked - "But it doesn't say what happens if a snake runs out of venom, does it?", "I wonder if the Komodo Dragon could grow as big as the classroom?", "Oh no! But what is going to happen to the lemur now it's been caught?", "Quick, can you read that bit again? It said something about dragons!". These are the kind of question that bring a smile of delight to a teachers face.

Next week we are going to discover which animals have become extinct and why... We will be using the Era of the Dinosaurs app. Follow our first tentative steps in the world of using the iPad in our classroom.

Miss Hayden - Year 3, Hokusai Class