The following apps have been reviewed and are applicable for reading strategies (including retelling events, visualizing, summarizing, storytelling etc.) purposes for students. Clicking on the picture will take you directly to the iTunes store where you can buy and/or download that particular app.
As we are building a shared community of knowledge, should you come across another valuable app for this purpose, please add it to this page by leaving a comment!
Created By: Pinger Inc.
Cost: Free
Description: This app can be used to assist students with demonstrating the reading strategy “visualizing”. Students can use multiple colours, stamps, stencils, glitter and text to “paint; with their finger on the screen and create their visualization. It encourages students to alter their visualization as they read or re-read as it is easy to “erase” as opposed to restarting on paper. Completed images can be exported through email. (Hutchison, 2012)
Created By: LocoMotive Labs Inc.
Cost: $6.99
Description: This app is specially designed to engage struggling readers and makes it easy to create, read and share fun and visual stories that support learning with the student as the main character. Students can record their own voice reading the story, or it can be used in combination with a free app (Kid in Story Reader) which will read the stories out loud.
Watch a demonstration: click here
Created By: AssistiveWare
Cost: $18.99
Description: Allows students to create talking books with pictures. This way, students can make personalized stories to read that are meaningful to them. This app can be used to retell stories or events to demonstrate reading comprehension. Each page in a Pictello Story can contain a picture, up to five lines of text, and a recorded sound or text-to-speech using high quality voices. The app includes male, female and children’s voices in English, French, Spanish, German, Turkish and Dutch and over 25 additional languages and dialects may be downloaded free of charge.
Watch a demonstration: click here
Toontastic
Created By: Launchpad Toys
Cost: Free
Description: A storytelling and creative learning tool where students can create, animate and share their own cartoons to demonstrate reading comprehension strategies before, during and after reading.
Puppet Pals HD
Created By: Polished Play LLC
Cost: Free
Description: Students can create their own puppet shows with animation and recorded audio. This can be used to demonstrate their understanding of the events in a story, depict character traits, make predictions and more.