i Teach With My i Touch

While I have not had the opportunity to use my iTouch in my main placement yet, I am really enjoying thinking about the different uses and how it could be used for differentiated instruction. I am really noticing the different strengths and abilities of the students in the kindergarten classroom that I am in. Some students are reading beyond grade level, while others are still struggling with letter sounds. Some are confident with guess and go spelling during writing time, while others have to ask how to spell something before they can move on. Even during our math time I notice how some don’t want to show their work to solve a problem, while others have to if they want derive at the correct answer.

Thinking of three different students in my placement I believe the iTouch could be used to assist their learning. One of the students in the class is really struggling with matching the sounds to letters and even just saying what sound a letter makes. I believe the use of an iTouch with a phonics app would help her to practice her letter sounds. There is another student in our class that is in a similar situation as the one I just mentioned however she is an English Language Learner. She would benefit from using similar apps. The student learning English has not had enough exposure to our alphabet and the sounds the letters make which automatically places her behind the majority of the class. Another student I believe that would benefit using an iTouch is a student that is doing some therapy for his fine motor skills. Not only would the Touch require precision as he first just selected which app he wanted on the screen, but there are a variety of apps that would help him work on his motor skills throughout their use. There are apps for hand writing where you have to trace the letters, and apps where you have to make matching selections. This would help the student to focus in on what is needed and strengthen his fine motor skills as he used his muscles to make necessary taps of the screen.

For the last student that I mentioned, who needs assistance strengthening his fine motor skills, I could also see the use of the Touch being very frustrating. While I have not witnessed this student get frustrated before, I would be concerned that using a Touch might be too challenging. If he was playing a game on the Touch or just working on something else I could see that it might be discouraging if he continued to touch the screen in the unintended spot.  I suppose a limitation in using the Touch for the two girls I had mentioned that need help with letter and sound recognition is that they might not be able to use what they are learning within the context of a text. If they are just going through drills of letters and sounds and are not able to recognize them outside of the app then they are not able to apply what they are learning.