Phonemic Awareness, Photos, and Play: Bringing Heggerty to Life with iPad

I am a PK teacher in CT at an ADA Early Learning Center! I work hard to find intentional ways to have iPad compliment the work we are doing in our curriculum! I wanted to make our phonemic awareness program more interactive and available for reinforcement in a center. Children participate in a photo scavenger hunt in the library center. Children will use camera on iPad to take a picture of the Heggerty alphabet letter of the week, posted in the library center. They follow the visual scavenger hunt steps and press the voice recording button next to the letter's picture to hear the letter name and sound. Next, they find their picture in photos, locate the markup tool, and edit their photo by tracing the upper and lowercase letter using a stylus. Once they have completed their markup, they go on a hunt around the room using camera to photograph at least 3 different objects that begin with the sound of the letter of the week. Some students search for the letter in the room if they are not aware of the sound yet. Once they are done capturing their photos, they return to the library center to share with peers and educators!

This activity aligns to our state's early learning and development standards for making letter-sound connections, identifying initial sounds, and using drawing tools with increased precision to draw simple shapes, pictures, and/or letters. It also supports executive function, following multistep directions, peer interactions, and speaking and listening.

My students have come to love this activity, and it is nice to have photos to use for observation as well as sharing with families!