As 2nd graders begin to practice cursive, this app (which should be familiar from earlier grades in learning Handwriting Without Tears motions) is a great complement to those teacher guided lessons.
Letter School Cursive
Tiny Robot Maker
Great for reinforcing the relationship between gears and movement, body parts, and design.
Fishy Paint
Fishy Paint is an app on JK iPads that allow students the chance to not just paint fish and put them into their own digital aquarium, but they can also record their voice overtop and change the movement of the swimming fish with the touch of their finger. They can even add a photo of their head onto a diver’s body so it looks like they are swimming in the aquarium!
BrainPop Jr.
This is both a site as well as an app that is on our students’ iPads. BrainPop Jr. could really live in any category on this tech resources site as it contains videos and interactive lessons across the academic spectrum. However, the resources surrounding social studies are particularly useful as it provides one more source of student-friendly information about a range of research topics. We have a school account so you can check your email for login username and password info.
Drawing Pad
Drawing Pad is a “go to” app for digital drawing and creating. It is an especially strong tool for “app smashing” between other apps such as book creator. It is a great beginner tool for JK and SK but can also work for students who want to do more as you can draw/mark right on photos, tell stories, label etc…
Letter School
Because you can adjust the settings in Letter School to “Handwriting Without Tears” (or other programs) it is a slightly better alternative to HWT’s own app, Wet Dry Try. It is recommended that beyond the first weeks of JK, students have to use a stylus to better reinforce pencil grip at the same time of letter formation.
Starfall
This is both an app and a site that both contain a number of activities for both emergent readers who are practicing letter sounds, as well as for those of our youngest students who are already beginning their journey into reading. It is pretty basic, but has been popular for a while.
Mystery Word Town
For readers who are just beyond CVC, this app involves the added lure of unlocking doors to work through mysteries, all while attacking words phonetically.
Short Vowels
This app is a nice opportunity for JK and SK emergent readers to get a sense of word families, CVC combinations, rhyming patterns and more… There are other apps like it, but this has a nice interface that has been successful with many of our early readers.
MeeGenius
While this app only contains 800 titles as opposed to EPIC’s library of 30,000, until last year it had one very important feature that separated itself. With the read-alouds, the words that are read are highlighted along the way. This can have a “follow the bouncing ball” effect for the young reader who can now track in a way that helps them with pronunciation, diction, and fluency. However, EPIC just introduced this feature and has worked out any bugs so it now works seamlessly. That being said, the free version of MeeGenious is worth having on hand as it contains some different titles.
Sight Word Flashcards
Sight Words is pretty straightforward with what it does, but as to what sets it apart from other similar apps, you can record your own voice reading words that you plug in to make personalized lists
Word Wizard
While there are a few apps out there that operate as movable digital letter tiles, this app has one feature that no other similar app has. You can import your own words so you can create different words to practice for different children. The voice is a bit animitronic and botches the pronunciation of some words, but the ability to plug in your own words (such as to match a current integrated unit) makes it a solid choice for word building.
GuitarTuna
There are hundreds of apps that act as tuners for different stringed instruments. GuitarTuna is likely the top tuner out there and is accurate enough to ditch your other portable tuners forever.
Logic Pro X
This “competitor” to GarageBand (only in a sense as it is also under the Apple umbrella) is certainly a superior and more complete program for music composition and engineering, though it is not free. In addition, because it is more robust, it is also more complex as it has more offerings in the intricacy of sound production.
Amplitube
While this app wouldn’t replace an actual amp for playing a show, it is a quality substitute for amplifying when practicing on the go. It does cost money (and is on the pricier side for apps), but it could be worth having on an iPad in the music department, and worth mentioning to serious student musicians who may make good use out of it at home.
Piano Maestro
This site is a digital accompaniment to traditional piano lessons. Because it is dedicated entirely to piano instruction, it has a few advantages to other multi-instrument programs.
Hokusai
Hokusai is a quality recording app for student artists who play actual instruments rather than create using virtual ones. You can blend different parts of a musical piece together and because it quickly digitizes your music, you can dig in like a sound engineer would.
GarageBand
GarageBand is still one of the leaders in music education, primarily because students need not play an instrument to begin making music. The ease with which you can transition between other multimedia platforms (particularly iMovie) makes it a “go-to” for project-based learning, even outside of music education. While you may be familiar with earlier versions, it is worth checking in each school year to explore the ever-growing features and enhancements, most notably with how different young student musicians from around the globe can collaborate in real time.
Tuniversity
Apple teamed up with Pharrell Williams to create Tuniversity. It is a robust program that allows students to deconstruct popular songs, change them up, and write their own. It is powered by Garageband, but also contains an interactive digital syllabus that takes students through their coursework.
Yousician
Yousician is a great way to engage students in practicing their instrument, outside of lesson time. There are dozens of instruments and thousands of songs to dive into. It tracks progress and personalizes a syllabus that is constantly updating. You may also want to check out the added benefits of becoming a Yousician Distinguished Educator.
Busuu
Busuu is a popular resource for learning a new language, and it has one critical feature that sets it apart. You can practice with actual native speakers across the globe. However, because it almost operates in the same vein as social media, it may not be ideal for use with our students on their own. Still, the free version has a large number of flashcards available to practice with.
FluentU
FluentU is super pricey but it is worthy of mentioning when it comes to digital resources for teaching languages. It is a massive library of videos that students can isolate words from conversations to gain an understanding of the language in an engaging way. While the cost for a full program may be prohibitive, it could be worth looking into one single subscription that could be shared as a resource.
Skritter
Skritter is an app that receives solid reviews for its effectiveness in teaching the writing of Mandarin Chinese letters and characters.
Vice Verba
This is a well-reviewed app for teaching Latin. It contains a number of game style lessons that educators seem to rate highly.
Duolingo
Duolingo is both a free app and free website that is a leader in popular digital platforms for teaching languages.
Gus On The Go
Gus On The Go is a series of apps that target younger students who are developing vocabulary. Stories is designed by the makers of this app and looks like an engaging way of having students observe how the vocabulary is used in conversation.
Scribble Maps
Scribble maps is a site that lets you draw, label, zoom, rearrange, etc… maps of every nook and cranny of the earth. You can change the view to be terrain only, include roads, and more, just like you would in any map app.
Tiny Cards by Duolingo
Tinycards is a similar flashcard app that is supported by the language education company, Duolingo. It contains study resources for subjects outside of world languages, but the largest volume of created materials and flashcards is for language-based learning. You can check out the video below to get some ideas of how it can be used.
Memrise
Memrise is a digital flashcard app that allows you to take photos and videos to incorporate into vocabulary building. It uses mnemonic devices to help engage student learning and memorization.
Fractions
This app is great for creating visual representations of “Singapore math style” word problems. There are also self-guided lessons and tutorials that are a great option for extending learning for those students who would benefit from extra activities
Number Line
This is the app version of the Math Learning Center’s website and is available on all Library and grades 2-5 iPads.
EquatIO
This is an extension that you add to Chrome for easy overlay of math equations etc… into a Google Doc and other sharable cloud-based resources. It is a highly recommended resource to explore as it takes seconds to add and could save you, and even potentially students, considerable amounts of time.
Math Learning Center Number Lines
This is a free site that lets you create, collaborate, manipulate, and share a number line. Math learning center is a great resource for other math related templates, tutorials and more. CLICK HERE to go directly to the number line template.
Geogebra
GeoGebra is another free catalog of digital resources created by educators and updated regularly. It is an excellent resource for data visualization for students, and templates that can be built on.
Socratic
Socratic can be used outside of math, but it really is designed and aligned as a math resource (obviously particularly with this version). It is a great extra resource for students who may want some additional breakdown of a particular mathematical concept.
Virtual Manipulatives
This app is on all library iPads (and grades 1-4 classroom iPads) and is a nice way to mark up word problems or build models. Students can take a photo of an object and incorporate it into measuring etc…
Operation Math
This is a solid option for older students who are searching for a game based app that engages them in “mission style” math practice.
Mathmateer
This is a fun game style enrichment app that allows students the chance to design rockets while solving math problems. There are also elements of physics and symmetry that are reinforced. It is mostly geared towards JK-2nd grade students. It can be adjusted per student to reach their level. Students can occasionally become too attracted to the “side features” of designing their rocket, so it is important to emphasize the focus on the math.
Pizza: Motion Math
Motion Math’s Pizza is an app similar to Cupcake but designed for students who have progressed to more advanced levels of money and budgetary concepts.
Questimate
Questimate helps strengthen number sense in both early and older elementary students by engaging them in fun, digitally interactive estimation activities. It is an app available on all iPads grades 1-4 (as well as all Library iPads).
Cupcake: Motion Math
Motion Math’s Cupcake is an app that exposes students to money (and early concepts of budgeting and entrepreneurship). It is also a great source for practicing word problems and mental math.
Fractions: Motion Math
Motion Math’s Fractions is a really powerful way for young students to conceptualize part and whole. It integrates the concepts of fractions that are written with a numerator and denominator, with decimals and percentages. Levels increase to meet the needs of all students who are learning to conceptualize introductory fractions and decimals all the way through advanced concepts. This app is available on all grade level iPads 2-4 (as well as Library iPads)
Match: Motion Math
This is a great tool for building number sense both within a single operation or across the spectrum of arithmetic. It is an app available on all JK-3 iPads.
Zoom: Motion Math
This app, Zoom, is a great way of providing students with visual, interactive number lines. These number lines depict whole numbers, decimals, as well as positive and negative numbers, and is an app available on all iPads JK-2.
Hungry Fish
Various levels throughout this app allow our earlier JK through 2nd-grade students help fortify their foundations in number bonding.
Motion Math: Wings
Great app that contains early levels that help build number sense through pictorial and digit representations, as well as leveled multiplication concepts.
Integration Resources 
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