{Review} Smarty Ears Apps: Articulate It! and Language Adventures
I love apps!! This time around, I’m reviewing two apps from Smarty Ears: Language Adventures and Articulate It! They have an ever-growing number of speech and language apps.
First up is Language Adventures. This will surely become a go-to app for a variety of language skills, including antonyms, categories, inferencing, multiple meaning words, synonyms, and WH questions.
After hitting “+ player,” you are able to add your students and select their target(s). One thing I’d like to see is the ability to go in and change their target(s). I had difficulty doing this and ended up deleting and re-adding students when I wanted to change a target. You have the option to choose either expressive or receptive. For expressive, no choices are provided. For expressive, choices are provided. I ended up choosing receptive and reading the question aloud. If the student had difficulty answering, I then provided choices.
Then you are able to choose from 3 levels. Each level takes you to a different area of the school, including the playground (level 1), cafeteria (level 2), or classroom (level 3).
The game board screen has a die (hooray – it won’t roll all over the floor) that the student taps to roll. Once rolled, the student taps the space corresponding to the number on the die and the pawn moves.
This is an example of a question. The questions can also be used for listening comprehension, which was a big plus for me.
Other features of the app: sometimes the student will get to move ahead (from what I can tell, this is random). I really liked that the major language apps were ones that I frequently target. I found the need to slightly adjust the questions for some of my younger kids, but that was no biggie. I also really liked the life skills aspect of the questions. Most of the situations that were given were ones that students might experience, so we were able to discuss the “do’s and don’ts” of the situations.
The only thing that I would change is maybe having the option to just do the questions – in the event that I want to do a different activity but still use the questions. Overall, this app is comprehensive in nature and uses curriculum based vocabulary, which is something my students will really benefit from!
Next up: Articulate It! I have a few other articulation apps on my ipad, but I love having variety to choose from.
You can select quick play if you want to just start. I have been doing this a lot lately! You can choose between phonemes, phonological processes, manner of articulation, or number of syllables. Holy cannoli – the choices are amazing! You can also choose the phoneme position (I, M, or F) and then further customize by selecting/deselecting words you want to show up. I particularly liked this option, especially for my preschoolers who need simpler words to practice.
You can also choose between flashcards or matching. Below is an example of what the matching game looks like.
And guess what?! There are also HOMEWORK PAGES! On the home page, you simply select homework pages and you can select ready made pages that you can print and send home. I really love this option because it makes my life a little easier!
Language Adventures is available for $24.99 and Articulate It! is available for $38.99. While these prices are a little high, I think the time-saving and motivational aspect of these apps is well worth the price. Thank you to Smarty Ears for allowing me to review these apps! Please keep making awesome speech/language apps!
Disclaimer: The app was provided to me. No other compensation was received. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.