Announcing Language Adventures!

Students of all ages continue to enjoy playing board games! I recently worked with authors Nichole Ontis and Danielle Sears, two school-based SLPs, along with Barbara Fernandes, on a new app that translates the board game format into an exciting and fun experience for the iPad. Language Adventures (unless I missed something) is the first speech and language board game for the iPad, and takes advantage of the electronic medium to add aspects that can be lacking in traditional board games: colorful and engaging presentation of questions, super-portability, and tracking of student progress. Plus, as Jenna of Speech Room News noted, there'll be no more of that overzealous dice-rolling that inevitably results in those lovely "Where did the dice go???" moments in your sessions.

Nichole and Danielle also envisioned a flexible therapy tool that SLPs could use to address the goals of diverse students who are all playing the same game (our groups don't always "go-together" perfectly well, and we do what we can, right?) For this reason, Language Adventures is planned as an expanding app, with new targets to be added (to the current receptive and expressive targets of synonyms, antonyms and multiple meanings, spanning difficulty levels from primary grades to high school) as free updates to the app.

I have had a lot of fun with Language Adventures in my therapy sessions so far. The kids LOVE seeing their photo come up as their turn arrives, as well as the dice-rolling and token-moving effects.  I appreciate that the app is contextual, using "kid-friendly" definitions and questions based on the settings of playground (roughly for grades 1-3), cafeteria (upper elementary-middle school) and classroom (middle-high school) and providing teachable moments for linking vocabulary practice to the real world.

You can get a glimpse of Language Adventures here:

 


Disclosure: Author has a contractual relationship with Smarty Ears Apps and receives a portion of the profit of the sales of this app.