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Great Apps for Middle School ELA

A little background on me:

  • I work in a school whose middle school is BYOT, or Bring Your Own Tablet. Families know it is coming, and they make necessary arrangements to ensure it's ready to go once they are in middle school. 
  • I use an iPad throughout the day, but I have a handful of students who have Samsung tablets, so I make sure pretty much everything I use is compatible with both. 
  • I am (quite obviously) a language arts teacher who is constantly learning about new ways to incorporate tech into the classroom, while still not losing the good ole' feeling of holding a book. 
SO. With all that being said, here are the apps I use the most. I will probably do more in-depth posts about a few of them, but here is the general list and the reasons I lurve them: 
  • Lit Charts. Yes, I have read the books a million times. Yes, I know what happens. But, when you are teaching, quite literally, FIVE books at one time, you need a little help. This one comes in handy to give you a quick low-down of what happened in the reading as well as major quotes. BOOM. 
  • Team Shake. Rule #1 of teaching middle school: NEVER EVER let them pick their own groups. This one is a .99 app, but totally worth it. Throw your class lists in, say how many groups or how big you want the groups to be, and done! I use this one almost daily. 
  • Mad Libs. Got an extra 5 minutes? This one is a great one because it reinforces parts of speech and it's funny to boot. 
  • Classroom App. Ok, this one doesn't work with Samsung, but I had to add it because, if you work in a 1:1 iPad school, you MUST have this. You can lock students' screens, look at their screen, and look at the apps they visited while "in your class." Awesome. 
  • Google Classroom. A longer post is coming because I am currently having my 7th graders write a paper, and because of GC, I am able to watch their writing and give feedback all the way through. I LOVE that! Another thing I've started to do is assigning at least one thing to be turned in digitally on GC; then, with my hand stylus, I can mark it up and hand it right back. Cannot say enough! 
  • Newsela. Need a quick, applicable reading for the morning exercise? Looking for real-world examples to support your literature? Look no further. They are enhancing this site every year, and it never ceases to impress me. 
  • NoRedInk is NOT an app (yet!), but if you want some fun grammar practice, this is an awesome resource. I have found it is not the best to use alone; however, as a reinforcer, with extra practice? Perfect. 
That's the short list of the ones I use every week. What apps are your favorite? 

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