Fun With Verbs & Sentences: App Review

I recently had the chance to review a great new app from Hamiguchi Apps.  Their apps are always well thought out, so I was excited to try their newest addition, Fun With Verbs and Sentences.  I was hoping it would be a bit of an extension from their First Phrases app, and I was not disappointed.

The first thing you do is enter your player or players.  You can add members into groups for future use too. 

Next, you click the gear in the top right corner to adjust the settings of the game.  The first button is for Activities.  You can select two different activities: Build a Sentence + Animation (select parts) or Watch & Say (recording page only).

The next setting is Sentence Type.  You can select from four different types: Verb (only), Subject + Verb, Subject + Verb + Object, and Subject + Verb + Prepositional Phrase.  You can also select the subjects.  you can have only pronouns such as he/she, or you can select to use nouns such as the boy/the girl/ the bear.

Next, with Track Progress, you can select whether or not you want the progress tracker on, and also if you want it to display scores.

The Verbs button allows you to select verbs.  You can choose Random, or you can choose Custom.  If you choose custom, you can chose from a list of dozens of different verbs.  You can also choose the Verb Tense.  You can choose from: Present ing form, Past Regular, and Past Irregular.

The Cueing button allows you to choose if you want visual supports allowed, and also if the sentence is modeled by the narrator before animation.

Bubble Game allows you to choose how often you want your student to earn a reinforcing game.  You can choose after each question, after 3 questions, after 5 questions, after 10 questions, or no reward at all.

In the settings area, you can also choose if you want the text on or off, and the recording on or off.

Now, you are ready to play! 

If you chose the Build a Sentence + Animation activity, you will follow these steps: (for this example I am using the sentence form Subject + Verb + Prepositional Phrase)

Choose who you want in the sentence.

Choose what you want the character to do.

Based on the verb you chose, you will need to make a selection of the noun you want the character to use.

After you make your selections, the narrator will state the sentence, and then an animation of the sentence is shown.  I chose "The bear is climbing a tree."

After the animation, the app takes you to a recording page.  Students are encouraged to record the sentence they created while an animation of their sentence is happening in the box.  The question, "What is happening?" is asked.  There are also the three circles available under the animation to cue each part of the sentence.  Students tap the circle to see the picture, and then tap again to hear the words.



On the left hand side of the page, there are three data trackers.  When the student uses the selected part of the sentence, you tap the button.  When you are finished with this sentence, you select done, and then press the green arrow to go to the next sentence.

If you chose the Watch and Say activity, students will see a quick animation, and then the app will take you to the recording page.  You just skip the sentence building options.

When you have completed the session, you will select the End Session button at the top of the page.  You will select whether or not you want the data saved.  The session results look like this:

You will get data for overall sentence accuracy, overall verb accuracy, overall object accuracy, and total prepositional phrase accuracy.  You can choose to save the results as a pdf, email results, delete data, or print results (if your iPad is hooked up to a printer).

I think this app was awesome!  It is a great extension for my students who were previously using First Phrases.  The video animations are engaging, and my students really enjoyed choosing all of the options for the sentences.  There are so many options of sentence type, that I know my students will not get bored with this any time soon!

There is a lite version of this app that you can try for FREE for a limited time (until November 22, 2013) after that, it returns to its regular price of $0.99.  Fun With Verbs & Sentences Lite HD

The full version of the this app is currently on sale for $9.99 until November 22, 2013.  After that date, the price returns to $15.99.  You can get it here: Fun With Verbs & Sentences HD