Smarty Ears has done it again!! They developed an app that works on higher level skills and is motivating!! As you can tell, I have a huge caseload of older students. I am always looking for ways to incorporate technology/apps that address their higher level thinking skill goals. This is it!! One app targets them all! This app words on higher level comprehension and vocabulary skills.
This app is easy to set up and navigate. You enter in the student’s names the same way you do for other apps.
You can turn on and off the background music provided. It may be distracting for some, but you may desire background music to teach how to ignore distractions.
You can play one player up to five players at a time! This is great for school SLPs that have 5 in a group! For each student you add, you can add a photo, avatar, or nothing.
Settings:
- Display written questions? You may want to turn this off if you are working only on auditory comprehension or if you don’t want students to be distracted or intimidated by the written text. I prefer to keep it on for my older students since in the classroom they are expected to learn how to comprehend both.
- When wrong: remove item or buzz. I prefer to just remove item. This helps students not get upset if they are incorrect. It also allows them to easily try again with a prompt already provided.
- Play audio. You may select to turn this off if you want to only work on reading skills or if you want to prompt your students yourself.
Once students are added and settings are set, it is time to decide the activities! You can place students in the same task or switch off between tasks between students or even within students. For example, I used this app today with a group of fifth graders. Three of them had sequencing and inferencing goals. Two of them had figurative language goals. I set the settings so that each student was placed in the correct goal for the activity.
Don’t have time to set up?? Realized you had a couple minutes at the end of a session and want to pull out this app? You can easily use the “quick play” setting. However, this setting will not develop the data results.
Below is a description of all the activities/skills included in this app:
Sequencing:
Students will put objects, steps, and sentences in order.
Figurative Language:
Students will be presented with a picture and brief story. The story contains figurative language. They must choose from the choices the correct meaning of it.
Which:
There is a prompt and students must answer the “which” question by selecting the appropriate image/vocabulary.
Vocabulary:
Students are presented with an image, brief written/verbal description and then a prompt to use context clues. They are given choices to select the appropriate meaning of the word presented.
Why:
Students are given an image and a “why” question. They must select the appropriate response using their knowledge of vocabulary and why questions.
Inferencing:
Again, students are presented with an image and brief story. Students are then provided with a question based on what they see/heard. They have choices to select in order to respond to the question provided. Students should be encouraged to look for clues in the picture and story provided.
Just like Syntax City and Social Quest, students will win “trophies” by getting several correct responses in a row. My students find this extremely motivating! They get so excited to win anything! I like to make them work for the most trophies rather than score in the report.
The score report is just for my data collection. Just like other apps, you can email/share the data and it also stores it on the app to view at a later time. This is great for progress monitoring, planning future lessons, and more.
Learn more about this app by visiting Smarty Ears and iTunes.
Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.
The cost: I recommend grabbing this app now while it is still priced at $19.99. The app price will increase to full price, $29.99, on 1/10/13.
