Free Technology for Teachers: SplashLearn

When an email about SplashLearn splash landed in my inbox last week I didn’t give it much thought because I get dozens of pitches every morning and because at first glance I thought it was just another rote practice app. It turns out that I was wrong about it just being a rote practice app. 

At its core SplashLearn is a service that provides a free and ad-free environment in which students can practice their math and ELA skills. Students can use it in the web browsers on their computers or use the free SplashLearn mobile apps. 

The way that students access the SplashLearn games and other activities is through your free classroom account. As a teacher you sign-up for SplashLearn then create accounts for them. Creating accounts for your students is quick and easy. You can manually enter names (or just initials), import a spreadsheet of names, or import a Google Classroom roster. The students are given little avatars to represent themselves. Students then access SplashLearn by going to the link that you give them and then tap their avatars followed by the image that represents the class password. (See my screenshot below for details). Alternatively, students can open SplashLearn then select “student” and enter the class code. 

As you might have guessed by now, because your students access SplashLearn through the classroom account that you create, you can see their progress in your teacher dashboard. It’s in your teacher dashboard that you can find standards-aligned math and ELA activities to assign to your students. To find activities to assign to your students you simply pick math or ELA then the grade level followed by the standard for which you want to find activities. Activities can be assigned to the whole class or to individual students within your class.