PicCollage and Phonics!

Supporting Phonics With  PicCollage

PicCollage is an off-the-shelf app designed for quickly creating and sharing photo collages.  It is very easy to get pictures from:
- Camera
- Photo album
- Web

It's also very easy to add and manipulate text.  It has one of the easiest interfaces for manipulating:
- Fonts (multiple intriguing and varied fonts)
- Colors
- Styles (bold, etc)
- Size (pinch & drag)

A wide and growing list of sticker sets adds to the fun.

But what does this have to do with phonics?

I have found PicCollage to be a quick way to review and celebrate words created through an onset + rime activity.  For example, I worked with a student who loves fairy tales.  Here's the procedure we followed:
1) We read Princess and the Pea from Best Kids Songs-Stories. 

2) We used the onset + rime approach to make words with the endings (rimes) -ed and -at, using the key words Ed and at.  The student and I took turns choosing an onset (beginning) and trying it with each rime.

 3)  'Real words' were written on a whiteboard in the appropriate column (ex:  fed and wed under the key word Ed; sat and fat under the key word at).

4) Then I took screenshots from the story and quickly added them to PicCollage.  I made a sentence such as, 'Check it out.  They FED the princess.' and the student found the word fed from the list.  We added it, and quickly made it fun by changing fonts & colors. 

5) The resulting collage can then be shared via multiple routes, including e-mail, Facebook, twitter, photo library, etc.  (I typically mail to the parents / teachers).