Introducing, Language Empires!

Smarty Ears has done it again!! They developed an app that works on higher
level skills and is motivating!! As you
can tell, I have a huge caseload of older students. I am always looking for ways to incorporate
technology/apps that address their higher level thinking skill goals. This is it!!
One app targets them all! This
app words on higher level comprehension and vocabulary skills.

This app is easy to set up and navigate. You enter in the student’s names the same way
you do for other apps.

You can turn on and off the background music provided. It may be distracting for some, but you may
desire background music to teach how to ignore distractions.

You can play one player up to five players at a time! This is great for school SLPs that have 5 in a
group! For each student you add, you can
add a photo, avatar, or nothing.

Settings:

Display written questions? You may want to turn this off if you are
working only on auditory comprehension or if you don’t want students to be
distracted or intimidated by the written text.
I prefer to keep it on for my older students since in the classroom they
are expected to learn how to comprehend both.
When wrong: remove item or buzz. I prefer to just remove item. This helps students not get upset if they are
incorrect. It also allows them to easily
try again with a prompt already provided.
Play audio.
You may select to turn this off if you want to only work on reading
skills or if you want to prompt your students yourself.

Once students are added and settings are set, it is time to
decide the activities! You can place
students in the same task or switch off between tasks between students or even
within students. For example, I used
this app today with a group of fifth graders.
Three of them had sequencing and inferencing goals. Two of them had figurative language
goals. I set the settings so that each
student was placed in the correct goal for the activity.

Don’t have time to set up??
Realized you had a couple minutes at the end of a session and want to pull
out this app? You can easily use the
“quick play” setting. However, this
setting will not develop the data results.

Below is a description of all the activities/skills included
in this app:

Sequencing:

Students will put objects, steps, and sentences in order.

Figurative Language:

Students will be presented with a picture and brief
story. The story contains figurative
language. They must choose from the
choices the correct meaning of it.

Which:

There is a prompt and students must answer the “which”
question by selecting the appropriate image/vocabulary.

Vocabulary:

Students are presented with an image, brief written/verbal
description and then a prompt to use context clues. They are given choices to select the
appropriate meaning of the word presented.

Why:

Students are given an image and a “why” question. They must select the appropriate response
using their knowledge of vocabulary and why questions.

Inferencing:

Again, students are presented with an image and brief
story. Students are then provided with a
question based on what they see/heard.
They have choices to select in order to respond to the question
provided. Students should be encouraged
to look for clues in the picture and story provided.

Just like Syntax City and Social Quest, students will win
“trophies” by getting several correct responses in a row. My students find this extremely
motivating! They get so excited to win
anything! I like to make them work for
the most trophies rather than score in the report.

The score report is just for my data
collection. Just like other apps, you
can email/share the data and it also stores it on the app to view at a later
time. This is great for progress monitoring,
planning future lessons, and more.