Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Rainbow Sentences

Rainbow Sentences, $7.99 from Mobile Education Tools, is designed "to help students improve their ability to construct grammatically correct sentences by using color coded visual cues. The who, what, where, and why parts of sentences are color coded to help students recognize and understand how combinations of these parts create basic sentence structure."

The intention is that students will learn how to recognize the parts of sentences such as nouns, verbs, and prepositions, improve their understanding of how combinations of these parts create basic sentence structure. In practice, I have found that it is tempting for students to use other strategies to complete the sentences. They will start by putting the word with an uppercase letter first, and the word with a period after it at the end of the sentence, and then start placing the rest of the words based on their length, as the spaces they are to be dragged to give an indication as to the length of the missing word. This is not an app I would have a student use alone, even though the recordkeeping in the app would allow them to do so. As my students use this app, I sit with them and ask them questions so that in answering my questions they can complete the sentence. Students have the opportunity to record their sentences in their own voice to improve their receptive and expressive language skills. I have found this app useful with young English language learners with language delays.


FEATURES
-168 images to create sentence from - plenty of variety
-Intuitive drag and drop to create sentences - easy for students to get the hang of
-Words are spoken as they are being dragged for non readers - very helpful, so the focus of the activity can be on the sentence structure rather than reading individual words
-Words can be color coded for added visual support
-Word groups can be selected to simplify sentence construction
-6 levels of sentence complexity
-Pictograph lessons to help students learn proper sentence construction
-Record feature allows students to record sentences in their own voice
-Save and email recorded sentences
-Students earn puzzle pieces during play to encourage continued play. Initially I was skeptical as to how motivating this would be - but when I had a student who was used to this app try another app from the same company that did not have the puzzle reward, she was disappointed that the puzzle was not there!
-Puzzles come to life once level is complete





Monday, March 26, 2012

Grammar - parts of speech

As an ESL teacher, I obviously have to spend a good portion of my teaching time working with my students on their grammar. I want my students to be able to communicate effectively and incorrect grammar often gets in the way of that communication. It is obviously helpful when you are trying to help students improve their writing if you have a shared vocabulary. If they don't know what a adjective or an adverb is, it doesn't help to tell them "You used an adverb here instead of an adjective." Mainstream students need to know this vocabulary too - especially because it does turn up on standardized tests - "Which of the words in this sentence is a noun?" (I'm not even going to get started though on whether we should even be doing all the standardized testing that we do  - that's a whole 'nuther blog!)

So, someone was asking me the other day if I've found any apps to help kids with their grammar. If you want them to be able to identify the parts of speech, yes there is an app (or two!) for that!



 Grammar Dragon is a free app that asks you to identify what part of speech specific words in a sentence are. There is no instruction as to what the parts of speech are. The 'game' is essentially a multiple choice worksheet with some animation added, though it is sufficiently game-like to keep kids interested for a while. The grammar dragon has captured all of your friends from the castle. You must rescue a different person on each level by correctly identifying various parts of speech. Grammar terms used in the game include: adjective, pronoun, conjunction, preposition, noun, interjection, verb.

This is intended as a one person game, but I could see two students working on it together. It can be a tricky game for ESL students if they don't know all the vocabulary  - sometimes they can mistakes simply because they don't understand the vocabulary. On the other hand, if they have a good sense of sentence structure and the vocabulary required for the game, it is possible for them to get the answer right without actually understanding the sentence they are reading.




The traditional Mad Libs games are also good for students to learn the basic parts of speech. There are several of them available, and there are even some that are free. Watch for the advertising on the free ones though, and for the in-app purchase options that allow you to buy more stories. (Remember you can turn off the ability to make in-app purchases in the settings, and it is also a good idea to always change your payment method back to  'None' after you've made a purchase, in addition to remembering to log out of the app store.)

Mad Libs (free) - the traditional Mad Libs game. The name Mad Libs is owned by the Penguin publishing company who put out the books and now the app. They have a free version of Mad Libs available for download but, of course, what they want you to do is to purchase more so it only includes 4 stories. A $3.99 in-app purchase gets you another 20 stories. There are 2 different in-app purchases available, for a total of 40 stories. The game does not always specifically ask for a part of speech - sometimes it asks for something like "a kind of liquid." It asks for adjectives and adverbs, and specifies plural or singular when it is asking for a noun.


WordVenture! (Free, some advertising)  - Although per story this works out more expensive than Mad Libs if you buy the additional stories, I like the fact that this app gives definitions and examples of the kind of words as it asks for them. Grammar terms used in WordVenture! include adverb, verb, past tense verb, noun, exclamation, verb ending with "ing", adverb, adjective, noun, plural noun. It comes with 3 stories - 30 more are available at 3 for $0.99. The three free stories could serve as a good introduction to the concept of the game as this app offers some support, and then students can move on to one of the other apps.



Silly Stories Lite (free, some advertising),  Silly Stories ($1.99) and Silly Stories - iPad edition ($1.99). More Mad Libs-type stories. The full version of Silly Stories lets you share your completed stories online, and I would hope it has no advertising. Stories that are posted online are associated with the account that posted them. The company does have a policy of not posting stories automatically - they are reviewed for appropriateness first.  (The company needs to do some editing of their site though - they spell inappropriate as 'inapproperate' and currently the site says "Additionally, all Silly Stories are reviewed before they are allowed to be made pubically available." Hmmm . . . I hope their stories are better edited!) Once a story has been uploaded and approved, it cannot be deleted from the website, but the company says they can disassociate it from the account that uploaded it. Grammar terms used in Silly Stories include: verb, past tense, adverb, adjective, plural.


SparkleFish is a MadLibs-type app that doesn't involve any typing.  Record the words it asks for and they are then included in a story that you listen to rather than read. SparkleFish is free, with in-app purchases for additional stories, ($0.99 for each story pack of 5 stories.) Grammar terms used in the free stories provided in SparkleFish include adverb, singular noun, plural noun, verb past tense, verb ending in 'ing', adjective, verb. Other terms include singular body part, beverage, liquid, number, ordinal number.

With all of the Mad Libs-type stories, (just as with the books) the students will have more fun if they are not working on them alone. Students could work on a story with a partner and read it aloud (and giggle) together. If you have more than one iDevice, two students could both work on the same story on their own and then share their different versions once they've added all the words. Once they've played the apps a few times, rather than buy new stories, the stronger students could then write their own stories. If you have computers available where the stories could be saved as templates, you could then build up a selection of student-generated stories that could either be used on the computer, or printed out for completion.

(Originally posted July 2011, updated March 2012)




Friday, October 7, 2011

In, out, on, and under

Learning which preposition to use can be tricky for second language learners. There are a couple of apps that can help. Speech with Milo from Doonan Speech Therapy has one version that focuses on prepositions, and Mobile Education Tools has just released an app called PrepositionBuilder.

I used Speech with Milo - Prepositions last year, and although it's not the most exciting of apps, the kindergartner I was using it with loved Milo the mouse. Designed for use by speech language therapists with a view to using it with kids on the autism spectrum, the mouse does seem to be popular with younger kids. Although most of the animations are very clear, there are a few that are potentially confusing. The preposition 'under' for example, is illustrated by Milo getting IN a submarine that then goes UNDER the water. This is not an app that students would use by themselves - it is designed to be used with an adult's guidance. There is nothing built in to the app to track a student's progress. In the settings you can decide which of the prepositions will be presented at each sitting. At $2.99 it is relatively cheap.



 PrepositionBuilder is significantly more sophisticated. Unless an adult is sitting with them to read the sentence prompts, students need to be able to read in order to choose the correct preposition to complete the sentence. However, once they have chosen the correct answer, the app will read the completed sentence to them. When a student gets an answer wrong, the image on the screen changes to represent the sentence that they have created. Although kids will enjoy getting the sentence wrong, the app is still reinforcing the correct way to use each of the prepositions. Students can record themselves reading the correct sentence, and that recording can be emailed to the teacher. Even if you are right next to the student listening to them, sometimes it's nice to have a recording that documents a student's speaking skills! Some students may find it harder than others to manage the recording and saving process by themselves.

PrepositionBuilder keeps track of each student's progress and rewards them with animations when they get answers right the first time. You can save profiles for multiple kids. At $7.99, this app is clearly more expensive than Speech With Milo, but I think with the added features you get your money's worth.