Dear Zoo for the iPad age

I am a huge fan of the story Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell.  Unfortunately, I only have a small version of this wonderful flap book.  Don't let the simple story fool you.  There is some wonderful vocabulary in this story:  big, tall, fierce, grumpy, scary, naughty, jumpy.  Lots of great opportunities for talking about describing words!  Today, the students I was working with included a student with visual impairments, so I used the iPad to bring it close in his visual field as well as flannel board characters for him to hold and match.  We talked about each animal prior to reading the story and then identified them as they came up.  I encouraged him to use his vision to find the animal and touch it during the story.

Here is a screen shot from Dear Zoo app.  It has some nice interactive features to help keep those short attention spans engaged!  My favorite is when the lion turns his head and ROARS!!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dear-zoo/id484923402?mt=8

To support the story, I also used printables from Sparklebox, a wonderful free sight from the United Kingdom.  They have lots of resources!  Check them out!

http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/toolbar/no/thumbs20/sb3913.html