Using Augmented Reality to Bring Letters Alive

Augmented reality is a great way to get spark interest in your little learners. I have been using Letters Alive in my classroom for several months. I would love to tell you all about how in love I am with this reading system. But the truth is… it doesn’t matter what I think. My students started using this program with infatuation. They extended their learning with liking. They fell in love with the animation. But the love affair was permanent when the sentence structures started coming together.

Letters Alive uses augmented reality to literally bring Letters Alive into your classroom! This means the flat cards actually move, make noises, and come ALIVE on the screen. I saw letters alive this past December at an SDE conference. I knew this was a piece of technology I could use instantly in my classroom and a powerful tool my students would LOVE to play to learn with it.

Luckily, Letters Alive is a local Georgia company so Cynthia and Faith traveled down to my school and helped me get going on this. Honestly, it is so user-friendly I had already played with it and my class was using it. But you never say no to smart, intelligent, and talented ladies who come to show you cool stuff. my time with them was awesome. They truly believe in creating a unique learning experience for students. I appreciate their out-of-the-box approach.

Letters Alive Set Up

The Letters Alive Plus kit comes with the software, a 4-section mat, a document camera, and cards like you see pictured. First, I got a cart to hold my kit on so I could move this station around my room as needed. This portability also allows me to instruct my students with they sitting in front of the board as well as using this station themselves. Here is what my cart looks like.

Letters Alive is Engaging

First, Letters Alive gives your students an instant hook and desire to build more words and more sentences. Your students will laugh and smile while they are building words and sentences. They will build, sound out, and read more words in a few minutes with this program because they want to!

Letters Alive Allows Learners to Test out Their Ideas

Next, here are two students building sentences. You read that right. Letters Alive is an awesome learning experience that allows students to play with letters to build words and to use words to build sentences. Putting this in the hands of students allows their imagination to soar and helps them to build concrete knowledge.

Letters Alive Is Self Checks

Here are two more friends working on building words together.  They use initial letters and rhyming families to create words. When they create an actual word, it appears on the top of the screen and the word is read out loud. Here is what the students do with the cards…

and here is what they see on the screens. 

Letters Alive Grows With Your Learners.

We started using Letters Alive at least once a week as our interactive blending board. Here is a blending board I prepped. I pulled out the initial blends we were using for this lesson. Then I used endings for families that we have covered to create read and nonsense words. These cards are not JUST about letters and sound-out words, but also great sentence builders. My students also used this system during center time. 

Augmented Reality Storybooks

Finally, I know the price point on this program might be hard for you to get right away. (Looking for funding ideas? I highly suggest trying Donor’s Choose and other grants. I also highly recommend letting your administration SEE Letters Alive in action on their website.) Letters Alive also came up with this FIRST (of many) Augmented Reality Storybooks! They are AMAZING and built for little learners. I can not wait for them to produce more of them because I will be grabbing them up instantly.)

Letters Alive is offering you a FREE Augmented Reality Storybook!
Use the code SHARING KINDER as your Coupon Code
when requesting a quote or entering a purchase order
to receive your FREE Augmented Reality Storybook!

I was interviewed and asked to share my actual thoughts about using Augmented Reality in the classroom.
You can read all about my thoughts here in an article for EdTech Digest.

Check out this NEW journal from the makers of Letters Alive. Click here.

All the opinions and remarks expressed in this post are original and not paid for by Letters Alive or anyone else. I actually use Letters Alive in my classroom and LOVE it.