Hannah Davies
Avantis Educational Specialist (UK)

Here’s how to find the templates. In WorkSpace, swipe in from the left and tap the background icon, then choose the template option (the icon looks like a plus sign in the middle of a rectangle).

This brings up a whole host of background templates for your students to work with, from sorting diagrams to graphs and number grids.

There are so many ways to use these templates in the classroom – we’ll be giving you some detailed ideas in upcoming posts. In the meantime, why not try these:

• Use the Number Grid template and ask students to mark off number patterns using the highlighter tool (focus in on a particular multiplication table, odd/even numbers, or prime numbers).

• Use one of the Venn Diagram templates for pupils to take photos of shapes or objects and sort them by a given set of criteria.

• Use one of the Comic Strip templates for pupils to quickly add photos and text as a story prompt.

Author is a great tool for creating basic eBooks and saving them in EPUB format. This video walks you through all its features.

Animator is a simple stop-motion animation app. Take a look at the video to learn the basics.

WorkSpace is a great multi-page app – draw, type and add pictures from the Camera, Gallery or web. Watch this short video to get to grips with how to use it.

Before I started supporting teachers to use LearnPads effectively in the classroom, I was a teacher myself for nine years. For the majority of this time I taught children aged between five and seven – a genuinely fascinating, critical age, particularly when it comes to literacy skills.

Of course, I taught many children for whom reading and writing came very naturally, but I also taught a great many who found it a bit of a struggle. Supporting and challenging those pupils who might otherwise have felt discouraged or wanted to give up is a tough job, but it’s also immensely rewarding, and certainly requires a lot of creativity!

Before a child can write a quality sentence (or understand one that they’ve read), they need to be able to express one accurately. Speaking and listening provide the foundations for literacy. Here are some quick, practical ways to encourage, support and extend those skills using a tablet.

Hannah Davies
Avantis Educational Specialist (UK)

Teachers have been using this technique since time immemorial, but having a tablet on hand makes it even easier. Whether it’s to help a pupil hear the phonic sounds in a single word, or to make sure they can listen back to a full sentence they’ve spoken and write that sentence down without missing bits, recording their own voice is a great help. It’s particularly useful for students with speech and language difficulties.

On a LearnPad, just tap the Toolbox and open the Sound Recorder app (if it’s not in your Toolbox, email us on community@learnpad.com and we’ll help you out). Simply tap to record and then play back. Most of the time it’s not necessary to save the recording, particularly if its purpose is to help a child rehearse a sentence. They can listen over and over until they’re confident.

This is really an extension of another infant classroom favourite: the barrier game. There’s an extra barrier involved though – time! It can certainly be illuminating for children to record themselves giving instructions, then exchange with a partner.

This can be used in many ways: from simply building something with construction toys, right the way up to following an entire recipe. Regardless, your class will learn the vital importance of clear, unambiguous language when giving instructions!

This can be a real eye-opener for older children. The next time they take part in a role play activity or a group discussion, assign one pupil to be the camera operator (it really helps if the students are used to tablets and cameras being used in class to reduce the embarrassment factor, and of course it’s crucial to have a discussion about consent and the feelings of others beforehand).

Now ask them to watch it back. They may well notice that one person is doing most of the talking (maybe desperately trying to keep the activity going, or maybe talking over others). It’s crucial to model respectful feedback to your class before you let them loose with this task; even as adults, it can be really uncomfortable to be challenged about your behaviour in a group. But, when they’re ready, it’s absolutely worth it and can be a real eye-opener. You might be surprised by how insightful your students can be when they start to come up with suggestions for how to make sure everyone is included in talk-based activities.

LearnPad’s Presenter app is really great for this – pupils can type (or copy and paste) a script into the autocue box. When they press the record button, this script scrolls up the screen like a real autocue, and the front-facing camera records the ‘news presenters’. Students can use the sliders along the bottom of the screen to change the pace of scrolling and the text size to suit their own reading speed.

Recording using Presenter works best when pupils have had a chance to really build up to their final ‘take’, and have fine-tuned their script (it’s a good idea for them to type it in Notes or Office Suite first so that it can be easily edited and saved). Finding a quiet spot to record in is also key!

Creating a news report can be a great way of summarising what pupils have learned about a topic, and having a script to read can give them the confidence to use more ambitious vocabulary.

Let’s start with the real basics: what is this LearnPad thing and how does it work?

The LearnPad interface is a little different from the tablets you may have used at home because it’s been designed specifically for education, so it’s worth making sure you know your way around it.

In this video, find out how to remotely control the LearnPads in your classroom using the Dashboard commands, and how to view screens in real time.

ClassCloud is our free, secure cloud-based storage for your school. Find out how pupils can send their work to ClassCloud and how you can access it.