My Experience with the iPad Montlieu Project

Comic Life/My Hobbies

Overall, I had a great experience working with my student during the iPad Montlieu Project.  My student was actively engaged in the learning process and enjoyed working with me each week.  The main focus of the experience is to help students work on their reading and writing skills.  During the semester we did numerous activities that helped the student's writing skills grow.  Keynote, Comic Life, and Collins Big Cat books were just a few applications that we used with the students.

The first project that I worked on with my iPad student was making a Comic Life presentation about her life.  I made an example to show my student which consisted of my hobbies, life goals, information about my school and what clubs I was in.  I asked my student to do the same.  She was really good at coming up with ideas for example she mentioned that she wanted to go to New York City to visit her grandmother.  The next assignment was to create a a poem about yourself using the Keynote application.  She mentioned in her poem about how she enjoyed playing with her little brother and also that she wanted to be a cheerleader when she went to middle school.

Collins Big Cat/Around the World

Later on in the semester I was in charge of creating writing activities on the iPad with my student.  I found a great application called Collins Big Cat books, which has a series of book applications that you can read and then you can create your own book after.  There are many themes of books such as traveling, gardening, recycling, etc.  I let my student pick which book that she wanted to read.  I had her read the book to me and then I let her create her own book based off the theme of that story.  She chose to read a book about traveling.  It showed different places around the world.  After reading my assignment for her was to think of places that she wanted to visit in her life.  The picture on the side is an example of a page that she did in the book.  This page was about how she wanted to go to the beach and why.  It took us two visits for her to finish the book.  She also wrote about wanting to go to New York City, Mars, and to the zoo.  She really enjoyed this project not only because she could write what she wanted but she could also pick a background, characters, and objects and customize it to her liking.

Another great application that we used was Cursive Practice.  The application allows a person to trace with you finger over letters, words, and even whole sentences.  It is great to practice cursive.  We only used that application one time but she loved practicing writing her name and other words. 

Montlieu Logo/Google Images

My time at Montlieu Elementary School was very enjoyable.  I would have only made a couple changes.  I wish there was more options for us to pick from when working with our student.  My student would get bored easily and would want to do something else.  Having some more options to choose from would have made the time with my student more enjoyable for her.  I would also like to have more of the activities free for me and my student to choose what to do.  For example my student wanted to write about other things that she liked besides her hobbies and school.  Overall, I had a wonderful experience at the school and I cannot wait to work with the students at Montlieu Elementary School again next semester.