Articulation Scenes Review

                           Articulation Scenes by Smarty Ears!

download it now! iTunes $49.99



Smarty Ears has done it again! Articulation Scenes is a new creative and engaging way to work on articulation and language skills! The app premise is based on scenes and has very cute, hollywoodish graphics and animations. 

There are four modes of play: Find the hidden items, tap and say it, the movie theater, and the production room. You choose the phoneme (sound) and placement (initial, medial, and final position of words) to work on and it lets you choose different scenes to play with. There are three scenes per phoneme (one for initial, medial, and final placement) with the exception of /r/, which contains 10 scenes. 

Find the hidden item: This mode is a seek and find activity. There are words listed at the bottom of thescene (if the child taps on the written word it will say it for them). As the child finds the pictures it says the target words again (this is great for auditory bombardment).  I also have the child produce the target after they find it to practice their speech! The child is rewarded with points for every picture they find and if they score enough they will get a trophy for their trophy case.  This task also promotes vocabulary building and listening skills! 

Tap and Say it: This is exactly what is sounds like! The child taps on target words in each scene and the picture pops up bigger. Here the therapist (parent/teacher) has data recording tools (missed it, almost, and got it). This keeps track of accuracy for you! There is also an option to record the child's voice for instant personal feedback. What I really like is that you can practice each word as many times as you want. To get more practice you can have the child say each word 3 times!  When you are finished with the scene it provides a nice report with percentage of accuracy.  Again you can also use this game for vocabulary building for those kids who have language and articulation goals!

The Movie Theater: The scenes is presented in a movie theater like graphic and a story/script is read aloud (containing target words). When it is finished you can have the child read the script of the movie (for articulation practice while reading) or create their own story. When they choose to read, the story is presented in a teleprompter! So cute! You can record the student reading the script. If you choose to create a story, the scene is presented again and the student can make up their own story and record it! (This is great for working on articulation in structured speaking situations).  

The Production Room: This section is similar to the Movie theater except it doesn't include the read aloud script first. This is ideal for student who are ready to just create! See above for the description of the two options (read the script and create your own story).  You can use this app for story elements and narrative skills as well! (Targeting those language goals!)

Things I really like: 

• Create quick user profiles: Name and photo/avatar only! This makes set up much quicker (as opposed to entering birth date and grade level)! This is great when you want to start a game quick and you don't have the student's records handy. 

• Homework Document: Each scene comes with a homework document (Amazing!!) that has picture cardswith images straight from the scene! Send these home with your kiddos for great carry over practice! It will get your kids talking about Articulation Scenes at home! I have even planned on taking screen shots of the individual scenes to print out with the scripts so that the students can practice exactly what we did in therapy with their caregiver! I may type up their recorded story (or have them write it) too! Example of a homework page (screen shot from my iPad, it prints or emails as a full page). 

• The Lounge: The lounge displays each child's progress report and trophy case when you tap on their picture. This stores their data from each session which comes in handy when you are needing some data for school reports or therapy notes! My son loved this and wanted to check his trophy case after each session! :) Great way to keep student's motivated! This is my son's lounge to the left!

• Reports: You can share the progress reports via email or Print (I still haven't bought a printer for my iPad). I like that you have the option to only share the most recent session and you can attach audio files!! 

• The tricky /r/ phoneme! This phoneme is one of the most prevalent targets and Smarty ears broke it down into the different types of /r/ sounds (pre-vocalic, blends, air, ar, ear, ire, or, rl). A speech    therapist's dream! 

Some may think this app is a little pricey but it is worth the money. This app provides endless articulation practice with over 1200 target pictures and 72 different scenes! This company has great customer service and provides video tutorials for all of their apps!  If you want high quality therapy apps you have to pay for them!

www.smartyearsapps.com

Great give away!

http://www.smartappsforkids.com/2012/05/apraxia-picture-sound-cards-apsc-giveaway-180-app.html

Tell a Story with Tommy: Consequences

Tell a Story with Tommy: Consequences

By Listen.Talk.Draw  $6.99

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tell-story-tommy-consequences/id519581206?mt=8




This is a cute and simple app to help teach valuable social skills relating to consequences of actions. It has seven different scenarios (playing, dinner, store trip, playing outside, see my friend, in class, and lunchroom) and in each scenario there are different "paths" to take. In each scene you can decide to take the appropriate path to a good choice and see the positive consequences (such as sharing a toy and having a good time playing) or a poor choice that leads to negative consequences (not sharing a toy and your friend won't play with you anymore). You are in control of the path you take depending on the target you are wanting to teach/reinforce. You do this by tapping a green smiley face for the good choice or a red sad face for the poor choice. This is really neat to show students how their actions could affect others. 

The app features a multiple choice quiz (in the report card section) that directly relates to the stories and scenarios in the app. For example: If I want to play outside, then I need to...   1. Share time on the swings   2. Yell at the other kids    3. Push my friend down.  I read the question and then point to each answer and ask the student to push the correct one. It keeps track of correct answers and gives you a nice piece of data at the end (it reports name, date,  and how many correct out of 14 questions).

Another cute features is the Found It section. In the scenarios there are hidden items (you can tell the students to look out for them or just see if they naturally spot them!). The app keeps track of which hidden items the student touches and you can go back and find the ones they missed.


I own all of the Tommy Sequencing apps and use them frequently with my students and clients. (Tell a Story with Tommy: Community Sequences and Tell a Story with Tommy: School Sequences). The challenge when working on social or pragmatic language skills using an app is the transfer to real life situations. After I use this app I try to talk about the student's daily interactions and see if I can get the child to relate something from the story to their own life. ("Have you ever had some one take a toy away from you? How did that make you feel? How do you feel when your friends share with you?"  ect...). I also have a good friend/not a good friend chart that we complete with picture symbols and we talk about consequences during this activity too.  I am fortunate to get to work at a center that even does social outings with students to try to create real-life teachable moments! 

This app is a good one to have in your iPad toolbox! It was made by a Speech Language Pathologist! Check out their other apps I mentioned above! http://listentalkdraw.com/

Speech EZ giveaway! Parent and Pro versions $300.00 app

http://www.theimum.com/2012/05/speech-ez-apraxia-picture-sound-cards-review/#comment-4461

Category Carousel Review

Category Carousel

by Pocket SLP $9.99

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/category-carousel/id516878389?mt=8

Another great resource to work on building vocabulary and language skills! This app is simple to use and the graphics are cute! There are 9 categories to work with: transportation,  animals, household, summer, clothing, winter, food, occupation, and instruments.

The Game: You select how many categories you want the child to sort through (1-9) and it will bring up a screen with the category names on top and all of the items on the bottom. The students have to drag the items up into the correct category. (Simple touch, hold, and drag). If the student puts an item in the wrong category it will pop back down for them to try again. After all of the items have been sorted you then can choose one of the categories on the top and  subcategorize! This is a really neat feature! This takes the learning experience a step further!! It is a more difficult skill to subcateorize within the categories because the items are more similar and not as contrasting(veggies/fruits/meats ect...).  This is great for when a student masters the main categories and they are ready for a challenge! 



The images are all real-life objects, which I think makes this game meaningful (the students may see an item and already have an attached meaning to it in their life!). 





This app can be used alone or as a supplement to your thematic teaching! I do a seasons/weather theme in the winter and I can use this app to sort through summer/winter items to reinforce what I am teaching them! Use any of the categories to go along with your lesson plans! I also have used this to check progress on IEP goals.  (If a child has a category objective on their IEP I will use this app to see how well they can categorize.  For example: Mandi was able to categorize 6 out 10 pictures correctly when presented with 3 contrasting categories with minimal cueing).


I highly recommend this app for the reasons above! It is affordable and well worth the money! This app was made by speech therapists and you can tell!

Read PocketSLP's Description in iTunes
Whether you are a speech language pathologist or a parent you will find the Category Carousel app a fun way to increase and enhance a child's vocabulary. The ability to categorize and subcategorize words and concepts is a skill necessary to build, store, and retrieve words leading to better comprehension and expressive language skills.

Choose a category (or multiple categories) and let children touch the pictures, hear the word, and then sort them by dragging them into various categories. Once pictures have been dragged into a category users can touch the category and watch it split into sub-categories, encouraging the child to think about words in multiple ways. Audio reinforcement and correction are included in this fun and educational app.

Swapsies Review!

Swapsies!!

by Spinlight Studios $1.99

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swapsies/id416577459?mt=8 

I can't say enough about this app! This app is so cute and well
thought out, but still remains simple and easy to use!

Teach occupations with this swipe input game! Swipe the clothes on the character (you get to choose which character to dress) and make them a fireman, police man, doctor, cowboy and many more in the Mix Up section.  There are three things to match: The hat, shirt, and pants! The new update also features little games after you dress the character associated with the occupation (rounding up the cows for the rancher!).

It has a quiz me game that is great for comprehension (it has the occupation in the middle and asks "what does an astronaut fly in?" with four pictures to choose from!  I use this app in speech therapy sessions with language delayed kids to boost receptive and expressive language skills! I am also planning on making a paper dolls with the images from the app for my kids to take home! I will post printables for those after I make them!

Receptive Language Tasks: While playing his game you talk about the occupations and match their outfits. After each match you play the game to reinforce it (X-Ray the Bear as the doctor to find "boo boos,"  Stop the traffic as the police office to let the turtle cross the road ect...). Then you go to the Quiz Me section and test their understanding of the occupations! (Who puts out fires? See if the student selects the firefighter).

Expressive Language Tasks: While playing the Mix Up section and making matches, ask the student to guess the occupation before you move on to the game. When you play the reinforcer activity, have the student name the objects and actions in the game.

If you are looking for an affordable and high quality app to work on boosting language skills through fun learning.....this is the one for you! :)

Features listed in iTunes!

• 10 different occupations
• Six customizable character (three girls/three boys)
• Thousands of possible combinations
• A fun activity for each occupation
• Interactive quiz mode with bonus round questions
• Accomplishment tracking
• Intuitive navigation
• Rewards sounds to create positive enforcement and encourage exploration.
• Retina screen support for iPhone and iPod Touch
                                                                         • Large buttons for small fingers