TenseBuilder is designed to help students learn how to identify and use correct tense forms by playing movie quality animated videos to demonstrate past, present and future tense. 48 video lessons (will expand to 54) are in place to help give students a deeper understanding about the purpose of tense. Special attention is paid to the past tense of irregular verbs.
Students will learn how to sequence events and how to differentiate between events that will happen, events that are happening now and events that have already happened. Students will also identify correct written verb forms and drag them to complete sentences.
Students have the opportunity to record their sentences in their own voice to improve their receptive and expressive language skills and promote carryover of these target verb forms to their conversational speech.
Research shows that children with language delays benefit from visual supports and visual demonstration, and that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) benefit significantly from the use of video modeling when learning a new procedure or new concept. These kinds of visual supports have become an integral part of instructional methods for language and social learning in students with ASD.
TenseBuilder was tested by 12 speech language pathologists over a period of 6 months. It was released initially on the basis of anecdotal evidence supporting improved understanding and use of verbs and verb forms in response to regular use of this app within speech therapy sessions. Speech language pathologists have since reported measurable gains in their student’s ability to acquire understanding for future, present and past tense usage. They have additionally cited gains in their student’s ability to generalize these skills to their spontaneous language.
Tense Builder offers a unique environment for improving a student’s ability to understand tenses and use verb forms properly.
Features
- 48 target verbs with matching animated movies (will expand to 54 by Dec 2012)
- Movies employ humor to engage student
- Video modeling for each verb and tense form used
- Each verb has separate animated lesson to show past, present and future tense
- Option to focus on a particular tense
- Ability to address past tense developmentally, by first teaching regular past -ed forms and then moving to irregular past.
- Includes receptive task, where student taps the correct image to match a sentence, and an expressive task where student drags the correct verb form to complete the sentence
- Intuitive drag and drop to create sentences
- Words are spoken as they are being dragged for emerging readers
- Record feature allows students to record sentences in their own voice
- Save and email recorded sentences
Watch the sneak peak tutorial here…
For more information, or to purchase a copy, please visit the iTunes Store.