Free App Friday - SparkleFish

Sparklefish is an iPad and iPhone app that is educational and fun! Students record themselves saying words from different parts of speech such as noun, adverb, plural noun, adjective, etc that they choose. If a student gets stumped, they can see a list of examples of that particular part of speech. After all the words have been recorded, a Mad Lib style story is created that can then be played back and saved.

Classroom Integration Ideas:
This would be a great way for students to practice identifying the different parts of speech. Teachers could create a printout with blanks for the different parts of speech so that students could write down their words before recording themselves on the iPad. (Tip: Hold down the record button for the entire recording. Students should say the word immediately after the record button is pushed to avoid delays when the story recording is played). Have students take turns recording their stories, and then play a few each day for the class.

Other ideas:

• Have students draw a picture from the story (what might happen next, etc)
• Take 1 sentence from the story and have students diagram it
• Require students to only use words that start with the same letter (alliteration) or have 2 syllables, etc
• Have students create their own SparkleFish type story for other students to fill out

Here's a link to an activity sheet to use with students: http://tinyurl.com/8xoutto

Other similar free apps:  Mad Libs (great for middle school), TackyWales, Wordventure!