A year and a half ago, I sat in my classroom on a late summer day and stared with trepidation at the giant vault-like cart that held the 24 iPads I would soon be integrating into my classroom. I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to enhance student learning through new technology, but it was already an overwhelming task. Here I was, with a new set of standards to teach, no curriculum to guide me in doing so, and a whole lot of devices which required me to change just about every aspect of how I taught. These concerns were only heightened as I came to realize that integrating technology into an upper elementary classroom largely focused on language arts instruction created challenges I had not anticipated.

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Ways to accomplish tasks digitally are pretty easy to dream up when it comes to math and science. But it is a little trickier with language arts. Sure, reading eBooks, doing research and typing instead of hand writing essays were no-brainers. But language arts instruction encompasses so much more, and truly incorporating mobile devices in such a way that made them vital to the learning process was a bit daunting. Especially once I came to realize that there was an obvious lack of language arts apps for older students. I needed graphic organizers, writing reference tools, games that reinforced language arts concepts. But few existed.

Fortunately, the incredible minds at ReadWriteThink.org have finally come to my rescue—and yours, too! If you are unfamiliar with ReadWriteThink.org, it is an amazing website bursting with free lesson plans and aids for teaching language arts. They also have wonderful online tools to help students practice language arts concepts. These have begun to be transformed into wonderful apps that are a huge relief to those of us who are working so hard to mesh technology with reading and writing instruction. My students and I have been using the apps in our classroom, and here are our thoughts:

Trading Cards is by far our favorite app of the bunch. Students enter the name of a topic, person, character, place, etc. The app then generates a trading card, and the student is prompted to answer some questions about their topic. The questions are excellent, and ensure that the student has a real understanding of the subject. The answers are then inserted into the card, and a picture is added to complete the project. My students first used this app while working on a social studies assignment that involved researching a famous event in history, and I asked them to do a trading card once they felt their knowledge was enough to teach the class. Many soon learned that they weren't quite ready to create a presentation and that more research and discussion was in order—the questions helped them to realize that they did not know their topic as well as they should.

Trading Cards is an excellent classroom tool that can be applied in so many creative ways. Saving, sharing, and printing the cards is very simple, and the app is even designed to allow for multiple users on the same device.

Venn Diagram is another ReadWriteThink.org app, and it is so simple, yet so necessary! It is really difficult to create a usable and readable Venn diagram on a tablet without using an app. This one fills the need perfectly. The default setting is for two rings, but a third ring can be added as necessary, and different colors can be utilized. Students create labels that contain the information to be sorted, and these can range in size depending on the needs of the user. It is very easy to use, and all of the ReadWriteThink.org apps provide easy sharing and storage options for finished products.

The RWT Timeline app is exactly what it sounds like, and it was the one I was most excited to see in the App Store. I use timelines often with my students, and I had tried several different methods for creating them digitally—with lackluster results, at best. Timeline allows students to create simple timelines with dates, details, and even pictures. It is very user-friendly, and my students were even able to edit their work without any difficulty. I was thrilled with how easy it was to create and share the timelines that so often accompany our research projects and book reports.

As if the apps already covered here weren't enough, ReadWriteThink.org also has three poetry apps on offer: Acrostic Poem, Diamante Poem, and Theme Poem. Each allows students to create original poetry in a different form, and they are versatile enough to use with younger students as well as older ones. The apps walk users through how to create the unique type of poem, making it fun for students and effortless for teachers. My students especially enjoyed the Theme Poem app, which offers a collection of shapes and figures to use as backgrounds in the finished products.

Alphabet Organizer is an app that is aimed at younger readers, and therefore my students did not spend any time with it. It is designed to allow students to enter words and pictures that are associated with each letter of the alphabet. The app is outside my range of expertise, but I am sure it has been designed with just as much thought and care as all the rest of the apps from ReadWriteThink.org  and would be worth downloading.

All of these apps are incredible resources for teachers who want to incorporate technology into their language arts instruction—students are practicing the application of new concepts and creating products to show their learning, using both technology and higher order thinking skills. In fact, these apps are so well-designed that students can use them independently—students are not only provided with necessary tools, but with instructional content that guides them through the process of applying skills and concepts.

With this collection, language arts concepts for older students are finally getting the attention they need in the world of mobile devices. We have enjoyed using them in our classroom immensely, and hope you will find them just as useful as we have!

The International Reading Association partners with the National Council of Teachers of English and Verizon Thinkfinity to produce ReadWriteThink.org, a website devoted to providing literacy instruction and interactive resources for grades K–12.