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Write About This

Mindprint Rating

Tags

ELA: Writing ^Music, Art and Makerspaces ^21st Century Skills K-8 iOS App

Skills

Flexible Thinking Expressive Language Organization

Mindprint Expert Review

Pros

  • The broad variety of engaging pictures should motivate most children.
  • An easy-to-use interface makes it so students should have no difficulty starting on their own.
  • The app enables parents to focus on child's specific needs of either speaking or writing.

Considerations

  • If a student chooses to dictate their story it will not appear as text on the page.
  • The interface may feel too immature for middle schoolers.

Mindprint Expert Review

Write About This is a great app to encourage students to write or speak their own stories. It is visually inviting for elementary school students and likely will appeal to most middle schoolers. Students select from a broad variety of 375 photos and prompts. They can choose to read or listen to the prompt and then choose to write or speak a story about the picture. Adults can use the settings if they want a child to work only on speaking or writing skills. Students can also take their own picture to tell a story. The app saves the story and enables stories to be emailed to a single address set by an adult. If your student needs encouragement to speak or write, this app can be a great choice.

Academic Benefits

Improves academic skills

  • Provides sufficient and varied types of practice problems to maximize understanding and generalization of the targeted skill/concept
  • Manufacturer claims alignment with Common Core/Known Standards
  • Presents educational concepts accurately
  • Explains answers so students can learn from mistakes
  • Better for teaching the skill to new or struggling learners
  • Better for practicing or refreshing the skill
  • Skills are practiced through authentic, meaningful problems (not just rote practice)

Fun

Engaging for the Mindprint recommended age range

  • Appropriate for a broad age range to use and enjoy
  • Subject matter and problems are relevant, interesting and authentic to students
  • Visually appealing to children in the target age range
  • Provides virtual rewards or incentives after meeting specified goals or objectives
  • Provides a "break activity" between academic problem sets
  • Offers ongoing, progressive challenge
  • Overall - Enjoyable. Given the option, students would choose this option

Easy to Use

Understandable for children in the Mindprint recommended age range

  • Has a free or trial version
  • Provides teaching guidance for adults to support the child and set appropriate goals
  • Provides an age-appropriate tutorial/first time users can work independently
  • Student should be able to use independently after first use
  • Has a multi-player option to foster in-person collaboration or cooperation
  • Multiple users can save a profile
  • Student graduates to the next level or topic only after meeting a benchmark
  • Can play without sound and not distract others
  • Students can save work between sessions
  • Can effectively understand and monitor student's progress (email report or in product)
  • Provides options to play in languages other than English/Good for ELL
  • Presents information in multiple formats (voice over, pictures and text, etc.)
  • Overall - Easy to use

Manufacturer Description

#1 daily writing app in the elementary grades! Endless student engagement with 175 included images, 375 text+voice prompts, OR customize with your own pictures. Kick-start all writing genres and watch reluctant writers soar! Write About This is a creation platform trusted on millions of classroom devices to gets kids writing!

“Top Pick” for Elementary School Writing from Common Sense Education!

REVIEWS:

“Editor’s Choice!” “Outstanding” “Great for a very wide range of ages and abilities..a highly useful and flexible tool for home or classroom to encourage children to write.” -BestAppsforKids.com

“The beauty of this app is its ease of use and endless opportunities for creative writing.” -BridgingApps

“Making writing fun again... an ‘A’! For any parent who may have a child who is needing extra practice in writing, I highly suggest this app.” -TeachersAppReview.com

“Versatile and easy to use for kids of many ages. The pictures are engaging and show diversity; the prompts get kids thinking critically and creatively.” -Common Sense Education

WHAT EDUCATORS SAY:

“I couldn’t get students to stop writing at the end of the day!” - Rebecca Wildman, 4th Grade Teacher, Apple Distinguished Educator

“Very intuitive...an embodiment of the Universal Design for Learning principles” -Kit Hard, Instructional Tech Supervisor

“Write About This is always my Writing Center activity. A great feature is the ability for students to record themselves reading their writing.” -Pam Craig, Second Grade Teacher

“An excellent app to use for developing writing and fluency skills with students.” -Karen Bosch, K-8 Educator, Apple Distinguished Educator

“With an intuitive layout, this app provides a variety of tools for customizing pictures, recording prompts, recording ideas, writing and publishing ideas.” Carol Leynse Harpold, Assistive Technology Expert

See how hundreds of classrooms use Write About This: storify.com/WriteAboutThis/in-the-classroom

Full version includes:

**ALL CORE GENRES
An easy way for students to compose and publish writing across the curriculum, including Opinion, Narrative, Expository and Literature Response!

**AMAZING COMBINATION OF IMAGES AND PROMPTS
Carefully selected and written by teachers, all 175 images and 375 prompts are interesting and appropriate!

**FAST PHOTO+WRITING
NEW in 2017: Quick Write Gallery saves time by providing 50 safe and popular image catalysts to accompany stories, poems, journals or reflections!

**SIMPLE DIGITAL PUBLISHING AND APP SMASHING
Download work to the Camera Roll, share by email or use the Open-In feature to send to other apps (.JPG, .PDF or .MOV)!

**VOICE RECORDING FOR IMPROVING AND CELEBRATING WRITING
Authors can add a voice recording with their work to publish a personalized writing video! Also great during editing and revising to listen to how the writing sounds!

**OPEN-ENDED CREATIVITY
Quick Write button gets kids publishing immediately– perfect for when they have an idea and a photo to use (no prompt needed)!

**CREATE STUDENT PORTFOLIOS
Author Profiles include a custom avatar and unique default email for individualized sharing with parents and saved work can be filtered by author (great for shared devices)!

**CUSTOM PROMPTS
Use your photos, ideas and voice to spark student writing responses about a classroom or school event, a book from class, a science experiment… anything!

**FLEXIBILITY TO FIT EVERY LEARNER
Voice & Level options (3 per image) based on learning theory and real classroom experience! English Language Learners greatly benefit from voice recording and playback!

**WORKS WITH ANY NUMBER OF DEVICES
From single teacher iPads, to carts, to 1:1...educators are using the app to meet their unique needs to engage students and improve writing!

**EASY AND ACCESSIBLE
Search visual content based on interest, curriculum, season or theme. Kids as young as 5 use the app independently.

What will your students write about? Visit our Learning Hub at WriteAboutApp.com/blog