Looking for the best free apps for your classroom? We’ve made a list of tools for teachers, including Epic and more!
Teachers, did you know some of the best apps for the classroom are free? It’s true! In fact, we’ve made a list of our favorites to get you started. From math to meditation, here are 7 free apps designed to benefit you and your students this school year.
1. ClassDojo
Classroom management app that allows you to track students’ behavior and engage with families.
ClassDojo connects parents to the learning and fun taking place in the classroom. It also helps keep tabs on your classroom by managing students’ behavior. Unlike other behavior apps or techniques that just give out gold stars, ClassDojo puts an emphasis on giving positive feedback. Students receive points, and teachers are able to help kids set goals to become their best selves.
ClassDojo is also a great communication tool. You can create student reports that can be shared with families, post photos and videos on the classroom feed, and send direct messages to parents. Kids even have a little monster avatar as their profile to keep it fun.
2. Google Classroom
Classroom management app that pulls from all G-Suite apps.
When it comes to must-have apps for class management, Google Classroom tops the list. It pulls together all of your G-Suite apps (like Docs, Slides, Sheets and more) to give you all the features and functionality you need. You can create assignments, attach worksheets, design slideshows and set deadlines. You can also grade and mark up students’ work and it will automatically save securely in their Google Drive.
Students can submit class comments for everyone in the class to encourage collaboration, or send private messages to teachers if they need some extra help and don’t feel comfortable sharing in front of everyone. Google Classroom also offers premium features to make it more interactive for both students and teachers.
3. Seesaw
Collaboration app for parents and teachers to connect.
Seesaw is another great classroom management app option. It features a digital portfolio where students can upload their best work to share with their families. Then teachers can add students’ strengths or areas of development.
It’s a valuable tool to save some time when it comes to communication between home and school. Seesaw offers easy ways for you to engage students, families and admins with classroom happenings.
4. Epic School
Reading app that offers the world’s largest digital library for kids.
Of course, no list of the best classroom apps would be complete without Epic School! As you might already know, Epic is the largest digital reading app with over 20,000 books, audiobooks and learning videos accessible to you and your students during the school day.
With books on every topic, including subjects like history, math, science, social studies, SEL and more—Epic is a great tool to use for lesson planning or assigning independent reading.
If you already love Epic School, now’s a good time to learn about Epic School Plus! It’s our newest offering that gives you and your students 24/7 access to even more books on Epic! So kids can keep reading and learning after class and on weekends. You can easily add your class roster through Clever or directly on the Epic platform. Learn more to see how you and your students can get immediate (and unlimited) access to over 40,000 books.
5. Prodigy
Education app with engaging games to improve retention.
There are so many educational classroom apps out there, but Prodigy is one of our favorites for math and English. It gives you extensive curriculum coverage around these subjects and engages students with fun learning games. They get to practice standards-aligned skills in an interactive and engaging gameplay experience, like an educational video game.
Aimed to help with practice, your whole classroom can engage in a fun competition to see who can finish their quizzes the fastest. It also helps you track student development to see where to spend your time and align the game to your lesson plans. Note that you will need your students to create an account with their parent’s help and email.
6. Tynker
Coding app that teaches kids programming skills.
Tynker is another great classroom app for education, this time it’s around coding! This app makes it fun and easy for kids to develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills needed for programming. With award-winning lesson plans, automatic grading tools and easy student management, Tynker sets students up for success.
With no experience required, you can leave all the coding to your students. Simply assign ready-to-use interactive lessons for students to complete by themselves! Tynker also offers hands-on learning through videos, puzzles and interactive self-guided courses—including over 5,500 learning modules.
7. Calm
Mindfulness app that offers meditation activities and breathing exercises.
This free classroom app is a bit different—and you might even use it in your own personal life. It turns out that Calm is designed for kids, too! In fact the Dali Lama said, “If every 8 year old is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” That’s where Calm’s free subscription for educators comes in.
Teachers can now bring mindfulness to the classroom through this free app featuring activities, meditation, music and more! Kids will learn breathing exercises and tools to help them with resilience, self-care and stress management.
There are so many classroom apps for teachers out there, but we hope you learned some new ones! And don’t forget to ask your school or district about an Epic School Plus subscription to get access to even more reading resources to help your kids learn.
