Tense Builder - A Review

 

Have you ever struggled with how to teach your students to understand verb tenses?  Kyle over at the Mobile Education Store have created a new app called Tense Builder which will greatly assist in developing these skills.






Tense Builder is designed to help students learn to identify and use correct verb tense forms through the use of video animation that demonstrate past, present and future verb tenses.  Ther eare currently 36 video lessons, which will expand to 60 by Christmas, which help to give students a better understanding about tenses.

Students learn to sequence and differentiate between events that will happen, events that are happening now and events that have already happened.  Students will also identify the correct written verb forms and drag them to complete sentences.

As in all the Mobile Education Store apps, the student will have the ability to record their sentences in order to help them improve their receptive and expressive language skills and promote the carryover of the target verb forms to their conversational speech.

There are 2 levels of play in this app.  Data collection occurs and multiple students can be made users for this app.  The data can be printed and emailed.  Correct responses are reinforced and incorrect responses are utilized for teachable moments.  Students are allowed to try multiple times to get the correct answer.

This is a great app to work on syntax.  The app could be improved by developing a way for students to get hints or cues to assist in answering the questions.  In addition, there should be an easy way to switch between members of a group when using the app and being able to record data for each student.

 

 

Disclaimer:  Mobile Education Store provided a copy of this app to this reviewer.

 

The Grumble Noise - a Review

The Grumble Noise is the newest book app from Erik X. Raj.  He is running a special for the month of August and offering this great app for free!

The basic story line is that there are 2 brothers who share a bedroom and one keeps hearing a grumbling noise that has woken him up.  It turns out to be the brother's stomach making noises and so they go to get a midnight snack.

On every page of the book, there are interactive elements to help keep your attention.  You can hear the grumbling noise, change toys, make the dragon breathe fire.

This is a great app for assisting with problem solving.  You could brainstorm what the noise might be and also what to do when they determine it is someone's stomach.  You could also have a whole conversation about what appropriate snacks are for when someone is hungry.

I highly recommend this app for working with children 4 years of age and older.  I tried it with varous children, both typical and special needs and they had a blast.  The illustrations, animations and sounds really kept their attention.