Interactive Story Comprehension Activities for iPad

I LOVE reading books on the iPad with my students. Don’t get me wrong, my pile of books is huge and I think there is something to be said for actually turning pages, but sometimes a new book on the iPad is so fun! I wanted to show you how I make interactive comprehension and vocabulary activity using a free app. I’ve been using this strategy for a while and blogged about it briefly back when I told you about my Give a Mouse a Cookie activities!  I thought I’d explain the process a little better today! Start by selecting a digital book. This week I used the Berenstain Bears Give Thanks app. It was on sale for less than $2 this week and I had a lovely iTunes giftcard left from last year. Viola! So before my student read the book, I went through and read it and took notes on comprehension questions I wanted to ask. I took screen shots of each page of the book. On an iPad you just hold the button on the screen and the power button at the same time. The image will automatically save to your photos. This book app also has interactive reading options (it reads the word for the kids if they are stuck). Plus when students click on a picture the app says the vocabulary word. They LOVE this interactive feature!  To make the interactive book I use the app See. Touch. Learn. This app is free. They also make a paid version that costs about $30 and comes with images preloaded. For my use of the app, the free version works just great!  The idea of the app is to create interactive cards with images. The student listens to the prompt and then touches the correct answer. So many of the cards might be simple vocabulary. You could have 4 food images and the prompt my say, “Touch the apple.” To make it work for my activity I used one picture from the story and two answer options on the sheet.  I’m using the app to work on reading comprehension and vocabulary. The Berenstain Bears have a lot of higher level vocabulary that can be used for intervention.  To start, you will create a lesson. Here you can see my lessons listed. The ‘people’ one was included. All my lessons are below in the ‘other’ category.  You’ll start by pressing NEW LESSON in the top right hand corner. When you make the lesson you will set up cards for each question.   The app lets you add 4 answers to for a verbal prompt. I wanted my kids to have the visual from the story, so I cheat the system and add a visual screen shot from the story as one of the answer options. When you start the story , which allows one of the ‘answer choices’ to be the story image. So in the example above, you can see the dark black outline around the third card. To add the image from the story, which will be the visual prompt, click ‘Create Photo Card’ at the bottom of the page. You will be able to select a photo from your photo library. Select one of the screen shots you took earlier. Next add two written answer choices. Select ‘Create Text Card’ at the bottom of the page and add a correct and incorrect answer choice. You will add those 3 images/words (‘cards’) to the page. Then add the verbal prompt. At the top of the page use the drop down box and select to “create your own question.” Then type your comprehension or vocabulary question. The computer will read the document or you can record your own voice. You select which card will be the correct answer. When you’re ready to play you can see each question presented.  Here are a few samples from my activity.  The correct answer will pop up large! The app even takes data and displays it at the end! Hooray! The first time you use it to make a review or comprehension activity it will probably take you a while. Once you are used to using the app, you can make a full review in 15 minutes if you’re tech savy like me!  Hope this gives you some new ideas! Have a great weekend!

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