Bringing Imagination to Life: Exploring Reality Composer in the Classroom

Written by: Nikki Kurland, Omaha Public Schools

What a powerful shift I’ve seen in my classroom lately! Integrating Reality Composer into my lessons for 3rd–5th graders has opened the doors to creativity, problem-solving, and immersive learning in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Reality Composer, a free AR creation app available on Apple devices, allows students to design, animate, and interact with objects in their real environment. The result?

Students are no longer just consuming content—they’re creating worlds.

In today’s classrooms, it’s important to empower students to visualize ideas, experiment, and see themselves as designers. Reality Composer makes this possible even for upper elementary learners. The interface is intuitive: students drag and drop 3D objects, adjust their size, change materials, add text, and apply simple animations. It’s hands-on, playful, and deeply engaging. It turns learning into something students can hold, walk around, investigate, and explain in their own words.

Science: Students can create detailed models of ecosystems, plant structures, or weather systems—and place them right on their desks!

Math: 3D shapes become interactive. Students rotate, resize, and label edges, vertices, and faces—helping make abstract concepts concrete.

ELA & Storytelling: Students build scenes from stories or design settings for their own narratives. Characters suddenly move, interact, and exist in the world the student created.

One of my favorite moments was when a group of 5th graders created an augmented reality for our “Mars Exploration” unit. Students are creating a prototype of either a rover, space suit, or space community that will help make exploration of Mars easier.

Reality Composer encourages: