One of the best parts of being in the EdTech world is the exposure to so many amazing products designed for teaching and learning! Although I am no longer teaching in a school setting, I am always searching for new digital products for early education. This past summer, I had the opportunity to work alongside a team of talented educators in the development of a literacy app named Squiggle Park, created as a reading tool for educators and parents of Pre-Kindergarten through First Grade students.
Squiggle Park’s Lead Teacher, Sarah Rich, highlights the features of this amazing literacy program below.
Squiggle Park provides bite-sized games for kids teaching foundational reading skills through play. Our games are built for teachers, by teachers, researchers, and literacy specialists. Our teacher friendly dashboards help teachers collect data to drive their instruction.
What makes our variety of games stand out from the rest?
- One of my favorites is the word building game. In this activity, students are prompted to build the word by listening to the sound. I hadn’t seen this activity featured in any app before (and I’m a total EdTech geek).
- Students love to play and stay engaged.
- It measures student mastery, not just completion.
- The teacher-friendly dashboards. You can view student data both whole class and by individual student.
- Games are differentiated for each student. When utilizing Squiggle Park in the classroom, teachers can feel confident that their students are developing essential reading skills that will help them grow into strong and successful readers.
- Provides useful data for IEP meetings and parent conferences.
Squiggle Park focuses on a combination of high-frequency words and the most common Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence (GPCs). By the end of Kindergarten, students will be able to decode over 300 spelling words. Upon completion of Squiggle Park, students will show mastery of over 1500 spelling words.
Here’s what one teacher has said about her experience using Squiggle Park with her students:
“I am a part of a successful district with high performing students but I have a few in my class who were struggling with reading. I decided to double the time these students played Squiggle Park and over the course of five weeks, they have been able to catch up to the strong readers. We are thrilled with this progress and love Squiggle Park.”
Sarah Long, Kindergarten Teacher
Would you like to try Squiggle Park for free?
We are beginning our Pilot 2.0 this month! This gives teachers the opportunity to try Squiggle Park for free! The pilot will last until the end of the school year (June 2017). Our requirements are:
- Teachers must have three or more Pre-K through First Grade classrooms willing to pilot. Access to iPads or computers is required.
- It is recommended that students use Squiggle Park for 30 minutes each week. Some teachers have their students play every day and others play 10 minutes a day 3 times a week. Another option is to add Squiggle Park into the literacy block station rotation
To join our pilot, visit our website http://squigglepark.com/pilot/. Click on “try for free” on our home page. While you’re here be sure to check out our free resources and PD videos. We can’t wait for you to be a part of our #SquiggleSquad team!
Watch this short video to see why Squiggle Park works!
Also, if you have a Smartboard in your classroom, watch this video for tips on how to integrate Squiggle Park into your interactive whiteboard lessons.