Great Tool for Young Writers That Struggle with Fluency

How I Use It

While this product was perhaps intended for teacher use in lesson developing, I have found the uses unlimited in my Writers' Workshop! With a high EL population, high class size, and full inclusion of students with special needs in my 3rd grade class, Writers' Workshop present many challenges. With the use of this app, many of my low literacy students can take the mini-lesson concepts and first develop their writing pieces on the interactive whiteboard. The ease of creating through pictures and audio recording frees their thoughts up without the frustrations of pencil and paper. Once the students have recorded and illustrated their ideas on the app, they can then replay it and dictate their own writing in their Writers' Notebooks. The ability to pause and replay lowers their stress levels of sounding every word out or struggling with the conventions of Standard English. When I conference with struggling students, I am no longer looking at a blank paper, but instead having deep conversation based off if their ideas and development of a story.