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Magical Concepts App Review

 

I have seen this app floating around Pinterest and knew I
had to try it and review it for you!  It
is from the Virtual Speech Center and created by a speech-language pathologist.  It is designed for the iPad and iPhone.  It was created with the intention of making
drilling fun and motivating.  After
reviewing it and trying it out with several students, I will say, it is more
fun than showing picture cards!  The
developers have thought of every feature to make the life of an SLP easier and
experience of a student much more enjoyable.

This app allows you to input as many students as you can
which will benefit from this app.  You
store them in once, and the app saves it.
When you are ready to use the app in therapy, you can quickly check off
which students you want to work on in that session and then select the concepts
from a list that you would like to work on for each individual student.

 There are two settings you should be aware of, you can set
it so you drill with one student at a time (like during a centers lesson) or
you can switch off each student after each question (I personally like this way
best, it keeps all students engaged and participating).

Another feature you can set is the magic show reward.  You can select to turn it on or off and how
many trials until you reward your student.
This is more designed for younger students but I will say my fifth
graders were interested in seeing it as well!

 

Now, which types of students would I use this with?  It depends on the goal in mind!  For the younger students (kindergarten
through second grade), you can teach and review basic following directions and
basic describing vocabulary.  I even
tried this out with older students (fifth and sixth graders) and I used it to
practice compare/contrast, synonyms/antonyms, and categorize adjectives in
terms of spatial (location), temporal (time), quantity (number), quality
(description), and social-emotional (feelings).

Examples of the concepts include: Above/Below Angry/Sad/Happy/Surprised
Around Apart/Together Behind/In front Big/Small Bottom/Top Clean/Dirty
Closed/Open Cold/Hot Crooked/Straight Curly/Straight Day/Night Deep/Shallow
Different/Same Down/Up Dry/Wet Empty/Full Far/Near Half/Whole In/Out
Inside/Outside Light/Heavy Long/Short Loud/Quiet Missing Narrow/Wide Next to
Old/New On/Under Over Pair Short/Tall Thick/Thin Upside down.  From this list you can see how I worked on
opposites!  After the student selected
the named picture, they had to verbally express the opposite.

This was a great way to collect baseline and then can
practice later on to collect progress data.
This app allows you to view reports on each student split up by
session.  It also allows you to email the
report to yourself or parents and can be saved for data collection or for
lesson planning future session using incorrect answers.  My one recommendation, be cautious on the amount of targets you select.  Try and complete all to get a true record of their performance.  As you can see below, with this one student, we only completed one concept which he did well with, but the concepts below says 0%.  This is not due to lack of understanding.  We did not begin working on it.

 

Overall, this app was easy to learn how to use and introduce
to my students.  It has great features
that allows for differentiated learning and collection of data.  I think the developers did a great job with
this app and I look forward to using it with other students and watching them
progress!  For $19.99, I think this is
one app an SLP should invest in.  I would
also include this app onto lists for parents if they are interested in
carryover practice at home.  Parents
could easily email you reports and you can suggest vocabulary targets per week
to work on at home.

 

Have you tried this app?
What did you think?!

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