Bluster iPad App

Hope you are all enjoying the holiday week!  I am loving the time spent with family and friends, the eating, the sleeping, and time to do whatever! 

I've been wanting to share some of the iPad apps we've been using in my third grade classroom.  I do small group stations during our WIN time - which some of you may know as RTI time.  The WIN acronym stands for "What I Need" - I know, kind of lame, and not sure who in our district came up with it.  Anyway - one of my stations is always computer, and use of the one iPad I have is part of that station. 

I assign various apps to use each week, and one that I have used is called Bluster.  It is put out by McGraw-Hill, and reinforces literacy skills.  It is FREE! There are options for grades 2-4 and I have my third graders use all of them. 

In this game, students have to group words with similar suffixes.  Once they have sorted all the words in this level, another group of about 15 words comes up to sort.  I do wish there was an audio button to pronounce the words.  I would ask the students to read them as they sorted.  My groups have a splitter attached to the iPad so that more than one child can work on these games at the same time.

There are explicit directions on how to play, and students can play alone or with partner.  It's called Bluster because there is some weather that comes in as a "disruptor".



I would love to hear about any apps you're using in your classroom.  I got quite a few iTunes gift cards this year to purchase apps for the classroom.  For more great ideas, go to Kathleen's website at Growing Kinders for this link party!