Articulation Scenes App Review
App Info
Price: $34.99
Overview
Articulation Scenes, from Smarty Ears Apps, is designed to help children practice recognizing and saying consonant sounds. The activities support several stages of speech therapy, and teachers or parents can choose from any of the 22 English consonant sounds in initial, medial or final position within words. The application allows learners to record their own speech which in turn allows therapists, teachers or parents to monitor progress.
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- Features include:
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- 22 consonant sounds in three positions
- 72 scenes
- Additional scenes focused on the different sounds
- Word, sentence and conversation level practice
- 4 practice activities per scene
- 1200 practice words
- Printable practice sheets
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Quality
Articulation Scenes was designed by a speech and language pathologist. It offers well-thought-out articulation practice activities that any preschool or elementary-aged child will find motivating. Therapists, teachers and parents will find an easy-to-use system to guide them in providing extra articulation practice for any consonant sound. The ability to choose not only the target sound but also the position and the level of complexity is a great feature of this application.
The software instructions are clear and intuitive. Even non-readers will quickly get the hang of starting, using and closing appropriate activities. The feature that allows students to record words, sentences and stories in their own voices adds to the fun. Finally, an informative record-keeping system will aid therapists and teachers, especially those who need to collect specific data to document progress on IEP goals.
Education
Articulation Scenes is a wonderful resource both for speech therapists and for beginning literacy teachers. Parents will find it useful to provide additional articulation and phonics practice at home, as well.
The activities make a logical progression from finding pictures of words that have the target sound through saying the words, creating sentences and finally telling entire stories that are highly likely to include words with the target sound in the relevant position within each word. The scenes are colorful and engaging, and will elicit lots of language, even from quieter students.
Directions for each activity are included at the beginning of each section, both in written and oral form. This will allow younger students and disabled readers to benefit from the system.
Early literacy teachers will appreciate the ability to work with words that have specific consonant sounds in beginning, medial and final position, as well. Target words are printed at the bottom of each page, and they disappear when the matching image is selected.
Entertainment
Children will gravitate to the recording features in this application. Nearly all students find it motivating to record their own voices, so this will be a popular aspect. Furthermore, therapists, teachers and parents can listen to the recordings later and note progress with both articulation and language production.
The application keeps records for student use, but I could not see an obvious way to reset records without deleting the player.
Children will find this application very entertaining. The scenes for each letter are filled with clear pictures of everyday objects to find and identify, so students will need to solve each scene like a puzzle. With 72 scenes built in, Articulation Scenes will provide a wealth of material for any single child, and will be an invaluable tool in the classroom. The recording function will be used again and again. Some children will want to make recordings simply for the sake of recording. Others will compete with themselves to improve their own performance. Either way, it’s a sure bet that Articulation Scenes will be one of the more popular applications on your Ipad.
Value
Articulation Scenes is an outstanding value at $29.99. It contains a wealth of material that will help students improve articulation, and the application can also be used by students of beginning phonics as they find and repeat key words that begin, end or have medial sounds targeted by the teacher.
Child Friendly
Articulation Scenes does a good job of accommodating a range of age and ability levels. Directions are provided both in oral and written form, and they are clearly written and easy to read. The icons are large and clearly obvious, such as the large picture of a microphone that activates the recording function.
Children could potentially access the internet in a few ways, but these are not included in within the main game play areas. In the “lounge” area, each player has a “trophy case” that contains digital prizes based on activities completed. There is a “share” button at the bottom of the screen that allows the trophies to be opened in iBooks or other applications, emailed, or printed. This feature is buried so deeply that most young children will overlook it completely.
The Support button on the home page opens a menu for adults that includes information about the application and its makers, a video tutorial, a page of additional applications available from the company, a link to Facebook, and a form to request support via email. The Facebook link opens the Smarty Ears Facebook page, but students could access the rest of the internet from here. Tapping the description of any of the additional applications opens the App Store where students could potentially make purchases. It would be nice if these features were a little less accessible to young children.
