An excellent classroom app includes top-quality content, keeps students engaged, and keeps them coming back for more. Just one app fits the bill for every class I’ve taught. Here are my favorite features of the Epic! reading app.
Epic! Content
The Epic! app contains 25,000 high-quality texts with fiction and non-fiction titles and series. Some of the highlights for me include:
- National Geographic Kids texts;
- Favorite series like Pete the Cat, Big Nate, Fancy Nancy, Frog and Toad, and The Boxcar Children;
- Beloved characters such as The Berenstain Bears, Splat the Cat, Scaredy Squirrel, Flat Stanley, and more!
Student Features
Let’s begin with the setup. When you add a new student to your Epic! classroom, they can immediately customize their reading profile by indicating their age and interests. This individualizes their main page with appropriate texts to match.
Once the setup is complete, your students can get reading! As they explore the app, they earn achievements that allow them to unlock customizations to their profile. My students tell me this is a highlight of the app for them!
They love to be recognized with badges for the reading they complete!
Students also can create a list of personal favorites. This is especially helpful when they’re reading or listening to longer texts they’d like to revisit during a future Epic! session, or when they have a title that they wish to read again and again.
My students also love that they can rate a book once they’ve completed it. There is a ranking system of 1 to 5 stars that students select right on their screen.
Teacher Features
Within the teacher section, I can see detailed student data for each child in my classroom. There is a master overview page that includes our class totals and an overview of how many books and hours each student has read.
Under each student’s name, there is a menu that opens up more detailed information about their reading habits, including which books they’ve opened, how long they spent on each, how many pages the student flipped, and whether or not they completed the book.
I can also create book collections with any of the texts on the site and assign them to any or all of my students. Using any book, I can also create a multiple-choice quiz to share or assign to students. Many collections and quizzes are already available from other educators’ accounts.
Try It Now!
If you have even one device in your classroom, I’d highly recommend the Epic! app. It is free for classroom use, and families wishing to use it at home can connect for a small monthly fee.
An excellent “Educator Resources“ section on the website contains helpful tutorials, videos, and additional resources.
I have reading response activities for some of the titles available on the Epic! app in my TPT store. You can take a closer look here:
Looking for an app to keep your students accountable during centers? Check out this post:
Be sure to share or pin this post if you’ve found the content helpful!
