One of our second grade teachers, Mrs. Shapard, wanted her students to research an animal to develop an understanding of what camouflage, prey, protection, and habitat means. She wanted the students to be able to share the information in a way other than the usual oral report. Mrs. Shapard chose to use the Book Creator for iPad app since it’s an easy way to make an ePub book. The app allows students to type text, insert images, and record narration. A new feature of the app allows users to make a book then email it. All books can then be combined to make one class book.

Because we only have only one class set of iPads that can be checked out, the students just wrote a few basic facts for their individual books. We were able to get the set for two different class sessions.

During the first session, the students were to use the Drawing Box app to draw two pictures: one of their animal and one of the animal in camouflage. Most had enough time to finish their illustrations.

The next week, I started out with everyone following along as I discussed the tools in the Book Creator app. It’s such an intuitive app that there were few questions and as students discovered tools they shared information with their peers. After the students wrote the animal facts, formatted their text, and inserted their illustrations, they were ready to record. Again, the app makes this super easy! While students dispersed to various corners of the room, I took pictures for their author pages.

Next step – email the book. All were sent to me and then combined into one class book. The only negative to combining books in the Book Creator app is that there is always an empty page between books (or at least I haven’t figured out how to avoid that). But, that’s a perfect spot for an “About the Author” page.

Taking this picture was probably more difficult than any other part of the process! Every time we thought we were ready to snap the photo, someone’s screen would change to something other than their animal picture. That would be fixed, then it would happen to someone else. It was rather humorous! After dissolving into fits of laughter several times, we were finally able to get all screens showing an animal at the same time!

We hope you enjoy this book from Mrs. Shapard’s class of animal lovers!

Link to the class book: To read the ePub book, you must click on the book link below while on an iOS device with the iBooks app (i.e. iPad, iPhone, iTouch). The book will not open on a PC. Downloading instructions are below the book link. We hope you enjoy the students’ work!

Animals and their Camouflage by Mrs. Shapard’s Class

Directions to download to your iOS device:

• You will need the iBooks app installed on your iOS device.
• Click on the book link above.
• Tap on the download button.
• Choose Open in . . . and then choose Open in iBooks
• The book is now in iBooks.

Lessons Learned:

• Always pre-write! The first day the students had the iPads, we had planned to only spend time drawing the two illustrations. However, some students finished early so we let them go ahead and start writing directly in the Book Creator. The result was that we had all kinds of writing! Not everyone knew what they wanted to say and even though we had discussed where to write the information, there was no specific order. After class, Mrs. Shapard and I debriefed and decided that it would be best to have those who had started their book begin again. The students would write a rough draft in class and when they had the iPads again, would type the information into the app. When we met again, there was a bit of groaning from the few who had started their book the week before but they quickly realized that their expertise was needed to help those who hadn’t had the chance to explore the app!
• Make sure students know how to save the illustration to the photo roll! All drawing apps are just different enough that exporting can be confusing. In Drawing Box, saving the image doesn’t automatically send it to the photo roll. There were a few moments of panic when students couldn’t find their picture but that was easily remedied!
• Use students as “teachers”! Students learn quickly and are invaluable in helping others who have questions; especially when a teacher can’t get there quickly to help!