Speechy Musings

Smarty Ears consistently makes some of my favorite speech & language iPad apps! So excited to share THREE with you this week (with givewaways) so stay tuned!!

Today, iPractice Verbs is up! As always, click on any pictures throughout the review to check out more about the app in the App Store!

When you open the app, you have the choice of either doing Flashcards or Find It. I’ll discuss both below:

 For both, you can customize the word lists used. I love this feature!

Flashcards is exactly what it sounds like! The page that comes up will look like the image below:

As you can see, you can chance the test (present, present progressive, past) and the utterance length (word, phrase, sentence). You can also see whose turn it is on the right side! Data can be taken quickly in the bottom right corner as well.

Check out some of the images below to see what changes as I play around with the features a bit.

First, I change the verb to past tense.

Then, I changed the length from word to phrase.

Here is another flashcard. You can see my stars building on the top. Your student gets a star up there for each correct response!

After you collect 10 stars, your student will earn a card which gets kept on their sticker page!

After you’re finished and exit out, you will see three options:

You can view the sticker page (see the image above). You can also see progress cards (see image below).

Last, you can make certificates for your students that are customizable!

As I mentioned wayyyy back at the beginning of this review, you can also utilize a “Find It” option instead of Flashcards. This option is customizable:

When the activity begins, it will look something like this:

When you find the correct answer, it becomes larger:

If you press an incorrect answer, it goes away and an empty white box is shown instead:

And here is an example of a sentence cue instead of a single word:

Great right?

OVERALL:

This app is a good one for practicing and using verbs of varying tense! I like that it has both an expressive and receptive component. Smarty Ears apps are some of my favorites, and I appreciate that they can upload data to the free Therapy Report Center. The pictures in this app were clear and everything is very intuitive! I like the simple use of graphics because sometimes I think apps overdo it in the graphics department The app is available for $9.99 in the App Store and I think it is definitely worth that price! An easy and effective way to target verbs!

Enter the giveaway below to win a copy:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Lately, I feel like my motto has been, “When life gets crazy,  use apps!” Things have been insane around here lately and having go-to apps to use has been amazing. That’s why I’ve dedicated this week to app reviews! Come back each day this week for another app review to help you finish the school year strong!! Some might even have some giveaways

Up today is… Real Vocabulary Pro by Virtual Speech Center Inc. Click on any of the pictures throughout this review to check out more about this app, or click here!

When you open the app, you are able to customize what your students see. You can choose a grade level and activity: synonyms, antonyms, idioms, definitions, or multiple meaning words. Just check what you want (you can choose multiple things to target at the same time) and go!

Then, you can customize whether you want the app to target expressive or receptive language.

As you can see from the screenshots above, the app allows you to take data as well! The fork shows you how many trials you have done.

Check out some of the images below to see the some of the various types of questions/levels included in this app:

Antonym (What is the opposite of ________?)

Definition (What is _______?)

Multiple Meaning Words (What else can _________ mean?)

Idioms (What did he/she/they mean?)

Like I said earlier, the app also takes data!! Check out some examples of what it can do below:

Another thing to note is that the app also includes mini games you can play (chef/restaurant themed) which is great when you need a quick, related reinforcer! They are quick and easy to learn!

Overall:

Vocabulary is SO important and I target it often. I love having an app to pull up quickly. The graphics are cute I like the fact there are reinforcer activities built in for kiddos who need it! Virtual Speech Center is great and I appreciate having the vocabulary words broken up by grade level for easy differentiation. Additionally, you can customize words lists as well. One thing I wish I could add is that the app gave you a way to teach the vocabulary. I consider this app more of a progress monitoring tool because it is set up like a test. It doesn’t necessarily teach the vocabulary words or give your student an opportunity to interact with the words.

 If you’re curious, this app is $29.99 and available in the App Store here!