Great for All of Our Students:

ASL Dictionary

by AppSavers.com

Sign Language is a fantastic way to communicate for the deaf. When learning, it is helpful to have a pocket reference and this app is indeed a great reference. However, ASL Dictionary is far more than your average tutorial app. It features over 4,800 signs and each video has the unique ability to slow the speed and to loop the videos, making learning and perfecting the motions far easier. It also has the signs for symbols, common phrases, and idioms. This app is great for both seasoned signers and those just starting out. Please note that you will need a 3G or WiFi connection to use this app.

Great for Families:

• ASL Word Match ($2.99) ASL Word Match tests your knowledge of five basic and five more advanced ASL handshapes. The challenge is to match an English word with the handshape used when producing the signed equivalent in ASL. This game is appropriate for students in ASL II or above. It is also a great game for families learning ASL together.

Story Time:

• Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy ($2.99) by iStoryTime- a children’s book illustrated and narrated, and also has an interpreter signing the story.
• Adapted Book- 5 Pumpkins ($.99)- an interactive book using a sign language interpreter to tell and model the story of the 5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
• Signed Stories- this app is especially helpful for language acquisition and sign language receptive skills!

Great for our Younger Students:

• Sign Language: Fun Learning for Kids! ($4.99)- lively and engaging video app, experienced sign-language instructor Rachel Briley leads children through a range of signs, including proper American Sign Language for letters, numbers, animals, family members, transportation modes, nature scenes and salutations. She teaches children how to couple facial expressions with signs to ask and answer questions and even how to sign popular songs, like The Wheels on the Bus, 5 Little Monkeys and Itsy Bitsy Spider!
• Monkey Math School Sunshine ($0.99): This is a preschool math app but it is highly engaging and great for students who need to review very basic math skills, such as patterns, shapes, sequencing, adding and subtracting with objects, etc.
• Dragon Dictation (free) – Voice recognition application that allows you to speak and instantly see your text.  This app is good for the oral student that still struggles with written English.

Apps for English/Grammar:

• Sentence Builder ($5.99)-Sentence Builder is designed to help elementary aged children learn how to build grammatically correct sentences. Explicit attention is paid to the connector words that make up over 80% of the English language. Sentence Builder offers a rich and fun environment for improving the grammar of all children.
• Language Builder ($3.99)-Language Builder is designed to help children accomplish the following educational goals: 1) Improve sentence ideation; 2) Improve sentence formation; and 3) Improve receptive and expressive language. Extensive use of audio clips promotes improved auditory processing for special needs children with autism spectrum disorders or sensory processing disorders. Auditory playback of child's voice offers reinforcement for language development. *Note* this app seems better suited for our Hard of Hearing students:
• Story Builder ($3.99)- Story Builder is designed to help children accomplish the following goals: 1) Improve paragraph formation; 2) Improve integration of ideas; and 3) Improve higher level abstractions by inference. Extensive use of audio clips promotes improved auditory processing for special needs children with autism spectrum disorders or sensory processing disorders. Story Builder offers a rich and fun environment for improving the ability to create a narrative.
• Zombies vs. Literacy ($1.99)- Stop zombies from eating your brain by learning early reading skills. Practice word families and sight words and you'll discover that your brain is too big to be eaten! Fun, interactive application to practice early reading skills. Swipe through the alphabet, word families and sight words. Touch letters to hear them spoken. Complete Dolch and Fry sight words (K-5) Interactive word stampede; drag letters back to make fix the word. Keep track of the frequency and date of word lists. Build a custom word list to practice.

Apps for Math Skills (made visual!):

• Rocket Math ($0.99)  This app cleverly integrates learning math with experimenting with rocket design. Students can practice reciting math facts, counting money, telling time, recognizing fractions, decimals, geometric shapes, number patterns and even square roots. Every time a child completes a task, they earn money that can purchase rocket parts. This appears to be an exceptional motivator! 
• Review from my class: My students love this app! However, the rocket building part of this app easily distracts them from the more academic tasks and it is easy for them to play the same level over and over again. I found it useful to monitor the students while they played.
• Splash Math Summer Math Workbook ($3.99) Splash Math is designed to help second and third grade students retain math knowledge over the long summer months. As a result, its contents are extremely comprehensive. There are countless opportunities to recall math facts, recognize fractions, identify place value, money, and develop number sense. Individualizing instruction is as easy as adjusting the play mode settings. The app also has a very comprehensive report card that tracks student performance. A separate activity card acts as a journal of daily progress. There are five user accounts to one app. The profile settings include an option to enter an email address. Having this information enables the sharing of performance reports. Children collect points as they complete tasks that will buy cute ocean characters for a virtual aquarium.
• Math Blaster Hyper Blast ($0.99): This is a great game to practice basic computation skills. It looks and feels like a regular video game. However, in order to beat the aliens, you have to answer computation questions. One of my struggling math students, found a very creative way to help her answer the questions because she was so motivated to play the game.