We have been working on our fluency here in first grade! It’s about that time of the year that we can all read, but we REALLY need to work on our intonation and fluidity!
Enter this AMAZING APP Sock Puppets!
First we PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE! We love to use these Reader’s Theater Plays from A Teeny Tiny Teacher!
Here’s an example of my students using this app:
Once we feel ready and confidence in our fluency, we get recording! Sock Puppets is currently only an apple based application. It is a free app, but upgrades can be purchased within the app.
When you first open the app, you will see this screen. To begin a story, click NEW.
Then you get to select your characters. Once they are picked, you will see a set of little eyeballs showing who your characters are.
Next you get to select your background. Where will your story take place?
Lastly you can add props and scenery. We like to keep it simple and we usually don’t use these in our recordings.
Once you’ve picked all your settings, it’s time to record! Tap which character goes first and you will see a red arrow above it (the yellow sock puppet will go first in this recording).
Hit the red record button. You will have 30 seconds to record. Switch characters while it’s still recording by touching the character. The red arrow will move over to which character is being recorded. If you upgrade, you can get 90 seconds of recording.
When you are finished, it will “scrub” the voices to make them sound HILARIOUSLY high. The kids love this. Then it will automatically play. Hit the disk button to save it in the app. To retrieved saved recordings, on the home screen just hit “open” to view all the recordings. Hit the share button (the little kid with halos ;)) and you can upload it to Facebook, youtube, or save it to your videos.
Under the “settings” button back on the home screen you can change the voice ranges of each puppet.
We adore this app! Make sure to check it out here! It really inspires us to be fluent readers!
Need more fluency ideas?? I wrote about other fun fluency activities here.
If you need more apps on your iPads/Tablets, make sure to follow my “Tech in the Classroom” pinterest board, it’s chalked full of goodies for adding technology to your classroom.
[…] A fun app for Reader’s Theater is Sock Puppets. You can take your reader’s theater script or have your students create their own and use this app to create a sock puppet show! It changes your voice to something silly sounding. It’s HILARIOUS! The kids love it. Read more about this app HERE. […]