Endless Alphabet

Elementary Education Internship – Fall 2019

During my elementary education internship, I learned about instructing English learner

(EL) students through taking a class from Dr. Schmalz. As I took this class during my placement

at Evans City Elementary, I was able to directly apply what I learned from Dr. Schmalz to a

student in my 1st grade classroom named Emerson. His first language is Spanish as his family

speaks this language in isolation at home. Emerson has many friends at school and is able to

communicate well socially despite English being his second language. Yet Emerson struggles to

keep up with the pacing of the classroom and often misunderstands instructions in various

content areas. Essentially, Emerson is proficient in basic interpersonal communication skills

(BICS), but he needs instruction in cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP).

In my class with Dr. Schmalz, we learned about various apps that can be used to support

EL students in learning English. As I hoped to broaden Emerson’s vocabulary, I looked for an

app that taught vocabulary that is beyond the realm of BICS and reaches into the realm of CALP.

When exploring apps on the iPad during a class period, I found the app called Endless Alphabet.

This app proved to be the perfect fit for meeting Emerson’s needs as it teaches vocabulary and is

developmentally appropriate and engaging. On this app, students can swipe through words for

each letter of the alphabet. After choosing a letter, a word starting with that letter will appear and

then scramble across the page. Students must then drag each letter back to the appropriate traced

letter to spell the word. After spelling the word, the app will create an animation that illustrates

the meaning of that word. These animations are engaging as animated monsters are used to

illustrate the meaning of the word. After the animation, the app will state an exact definition for

that word. Altogether, this app proved to be the perfect fit for supporting Emerson in broadening
his CALP language. I introduced the app to Emerson during the wait period for his bus and

would practice using the app with him 1-2 times a week following this introduction.

I have included a YouTube video below that illustrates the sequence of the activity on

Endless Alphabet. Using this app proved to be effective and supported the claim that apps are

successful in stimulating learning of the English language. In my future career as an educator, I

am likely to have more EL students or students who will benefit from an app designed to

broaden vocabulary. I hope to utilize apps such as Endless Alphabet in my future classroom as it

proved to be engaging and beneficial for Emerson.