Children with language difficulties have difficulty with prepositions because of a number of factors:
– The meaning changes depending on the context in which they are used.
– Prepositions are not tangible and children often find it difficult to identify them in spontaneous and/or connected speech.
Whilst it is important to teach prepositions in real contexts, the transfer from concrete to abstract is often difficult.
Prepositions Journey
by Virtual Speech Center targets early/common prepositions with three animals- a fox, a rabbit, and a squirrel, in three different scenes; Lake Camping, Island and the City.
Lake Camping
Island
City
The Prepositions Journey app includes:
- Receptive tasks: Children identify animals in different locations on the scene, for example, “Show me the bunny in the basket.”
- Expressive tasks: Children verbally respond to “where” questions, for example, “Where is the bunny?”
Prepositions Journey follows the format of all of the Apps by Virtual Speech Centre and is easy to set up and play.
Tapping the Info button provides information on how to play.Multiple students can play in one session.
Prepositions that are targeted include:
- In
- On
- Under
- Next to
- In front of
- Behind
- In the back
- Between
- Above
- Below
- Beside
- In the middle
- Outside
- Out
- Over
- Near
- Far
- On the side
- On the left
- On the right
The Settings Menu enables the user to select
- Enable Audio: Turns on/off audio instructions
- User Alternate Count: For use with more than one player
- Automatic Paging: When turned on, the app will move to the next item after a correct response
- Random Paging: Changes the order of presentation of items.
- Correct/Incorrect Sound: 3 different sounds are offered.
Settings Menu
Reports can be printed or emailed and offer specific information of the student’s performance.
The reports are displayed as a graph, with the percentage that the student obtained on each item.
Report
I Like:
Different contexts/scenes allows for vocabulary teaching.
Expressive and Receptive tasks can be used together
Record Feature can be used during both receptive and expressive tasks.
There are a large number of examples for each preposition.
Morphological structures of words can also be addressed e.g. plurals busses
Can be used for preliterate children as no reading is required.
I Would like:
A motivation or reward game to encourage children to spend more time playing on this app.
Would like additional vocabulary included in the scenes – e.g. a greater variety of vehicles in the city scenes.
I would like the option to increase the number of foils in order to make the task more difficult
Prepositions Journey is available in the app store for $9.99
Thank you to Virtual Speech Center for providing me with a copy of this app for review.
