Receptive Language Assessment App Review

If you're a Splingo's Language Universe app fan you might have noticed that The Speech & Language Store has introduced a new app called The Receptive Language Assessment. The app was released July 17, 2012 and is available in iTunes. They provided me with a copy of the app to review, but the opinions expressed within are my own. 

The Receptive Language Assessment tests language comprehension of a variety of word types, at four different levels of complexity. The app was developed to assess language comprehension skills from Preschool level upwards. 

Students are presented pages with vocabulary or directions to demonstrate knowledge of specific skills in 4 levels of increasing complexity. Clinicians can choose to add or remove the text on the page. Pressing the 'repeat' button in the right hand corner will repeat the verbal directions. 

Students are presented with drawings of items. For prepositional concepts (behind, next to, etc.) a yellow arrow indicates the choices of placement. This probe asked the student to 'Put the ball in front of the small garden.' The student drags the soccer ball to the correct arrow.

Demo's are provided within the app to give students the ability to practice putting the items in the correct places. 

Within the app you can quickly create student profiles. You can add thumbnail pictures if desired. As you can see above, during my trial I completed the full assessment. My sweet cousins were my kid testers and we didn't get through the entire assessment so his is marked as incomplete assessment. You can pause the app and come back as needed. 

The Receptive Language Assessment tests a variety of word and sentence types at four different levels of complexity:
• 1 main word – object nouns, person nouns, location nouns, verbs, prepositions, size adjectives, color adjectives and attribute adjectives
• 2 main words – seven different sentence types e.g. object-person, adjective-object etc
• 3 main words – seven different sentence types, e.g. adjective-object-location, person-action-location etc
• 4 main words – seven different sentence types, e.g. object-preposition-adjective-location, person-action-preposition-location

The data results provide percentages of correct answers as well as copies of each probe, identifying individual errors. The clear and professional report can be saved, emailed and printed your records. 


You can select a select start and end point based on your clients language levels. The entire assessment includes 116 probes.  The assessment is divided into levels 1-4. If you start at level 1 it will continue and take you through each probe. It took me  over 30 minutes to complete all the probes. Likely your students will need breaks or to complete all the probes over a period of time. 


Overall what I really like about this app is the ability to create a baseline of my client's skills for understanding sentence structure and following directions of increasing complexity. The kids loved the reward system where Splingo the entertaining alien does flips as they complete tasks. 

The bottom line for purchasing as assessment for therapy is how will I be able to use it. The app doesn't include any norm referenced data or suggested age references for each skill. I will use it to generate baseline data to generate treatment objectives. Adding developmental norms for each skill would increase the value of this app immensely to make it usable to for a variety of users. SLP's will use clinical knowledge to make judgements about age appropriate skills, but parents who use this app may be left with results but no way to interpret them. 


The app crashed a few times when I tried to 'resume' a test. A bug I'm sure the creators will work out quickly. 



Visit The Speech and Language Store's page to find out more about their products. 

'In Your Shoes' pragmatic language activity

Hey friends! I'm  loving my Colorado vacation this week. Everybody needs some time away! I had to hop on here and share a new download with you!

The games are called 'In your shoes.' The download includes 3 games: Problem Solving 1 & 2 and Perspective Taking. They feature these cute shoe graphics from KPM doodles.

The problem solving games include social situations that require the student to identify a solution. I use this large graphic in the middle of the table to remind the kids to identify the problem and the solution!

The game cards are tennis shoes with a social problem listed. For example:  A new student came to school today. He’s standing near the lunch line looking nervous.. What could you do? The level one cards are appropriate for students in grades k-4, but depending on developmental level they may work for your older students as well. Level 2 problem solving includes social problems appropriate for students in grades 4-8. For example: Chad wants to play football and be in band. They have practice afterschool at the same time. What should he do?

The perspective taking cards encourage kids to imagine themselves in someone else's shoes! You can use them to open discussion about empathy and making decisions based on others feelings. Theory of mind is such a difficult skill to teach, but it's fun when it clicks! The lack of perspective taking skills can really impact the kids ability to be sensitive to others and identify how others are feeling and reacting in a conversation.

The shoe cards each have a social situation. The students can identify how different people in the situation would feel. For example:  Kennedy and Jordan both had their birthday parties last week and you only went to Kennedy’s. How does Jordan feel?

The games each come with these ' Gum on your Shoes' cards. They can help make the activity seem like more of a game if you need to use them!

If you want to learn more about Perspective Taking head over to Jill's great site!

You can grab the download in my TPT store! Let me know if you use them!

Articulation Station Review & Giveaway!

Articulation Station Pro is an articulation app created by Little Bee Speech. The app is created for use by therapists, parents and teachers to target articulation impairments at a variety of difficulty levels.

While there are a variety of apps targeting articulation, Articulation Station Pro is the app I open most on my iPad for articulation treatment. I've seen a variety of comparative lists that talk about the differences in speech apps. You can compare number of pictures, difficulty levels, and drawn pictures versus real pictures.  All that information is great but sometimes you just want to know a person's personal preference!  This is my 'go-to' articulation app. It's easy for me to quickly use and my kids love it!

The app targets articulation sounds (p,b,m,d,n,t,k,g,f,v,ch,j,z,sh,th)  in initial, medial and final position of words, sentences and stories. Blends are targeted in (l,r,s). Each word has 60 target words and all together Articulation Station Pro has over 1,000 target words. The photo above demonstrates the interface for single words in the flashcard mode. SLP's can choose the target sound and position within the word. Select the green or red button to keep data. The record button allows you to record a child's answer and play it back for self monitoring. The other option for single word level practice is a matching game. It's what my students ask for the most!

The sentence level allows the SLP to pick two levels of difficulty. The student can select to rotate a single word within a sentence, as seen in the picture above. You can also select novel sentences.

The story level includes short stories that include picture prompts. The stories are loaded with target words.

At end of each story, a short comprehension check in included. Another great way to work on carryover and generalization during reading.

The scoring function provides data tracking for multiple students. Up to 6 students at one time may be targeted for group sessions.

An update was released 7/24/12 that includes the ability to select and save word lists. Check out a video tutorial here. Making lists is a big improvement for children with multiple articulation impairments.  It allows therapist to remove words with other conflicting errors.

In future updates I would love to see the ability to 'repeat' a word list! For example if I am working on initial /k/ with a student in single word flashcards, after the great 'You did it!' award at the end - I'd love to select 'repeat!

Overall, I don't think I can give a better recommendation than to say that of all my articulation apps, this is the one I use most. It's user friendly and what I recommend most to parents. Parents can buy the regular version of Articulation Station and select only the sounds they need to practice.

Little Bee Speech is being very generous and giving me two copies of Articulation Station Pro to giveaway!  Enter via rafflecopter below!



a Rafflecopter giveaway


**Edit: I forgot to mention, you can try out Articulation Station by downloading it here. It comes with the sound /p/. A great way to test it out and determine if it will fit your needs! On the iTunes store you will see both Articulation Station and Articulation Station Pro. The Pro version includes all the phonemes included. The regular version allows you to buy sounds individually.

Beach Ball Language!

Hey there SLP friends. This is a quick summer speech idea!

Grab a beach ball from the dollar bins at Target and make a therapy tool! I grabbed 3 and made one for literacy group! I kept the others to make throughout the school year. My literacy ball has phonological awareness skills in each color. The kids toss the ball in a circle. When they catch it they complete the action under their right hand.

I also created this beach ball to work on expressive language and syntax. I found this one in the summer section at Target. On each small circle I wrote a word. The students catch the ball and then use the two words under their hands to create a sentence.

Head over to the summer clearance and grab some beach balls to use in therapy this year!

Paint Bags!

I'm sure you have seen these paint bags floating around pinterest. Teachers use them to have their students get some hands on practice for tracing letters and numbers.

This summer a colleague, Emily Lansden, made a version for her summer language group!

Under each paint bag she placed stickers on paper. Students took turns searching for items under the paint. Such an easy idea that elicitired a lot of great language!

Thanks Emily!!

Pancake Flip!

I checked another item off my Pinterest 'to-do' list this week! I made a Pancake Flip game, inspired by this link I found on Pinterest!

To make your own, you just need a few spatula's from the Dollar Tree and my freebie printable!

One side of the pancake is lighter to look like 'batter.' As the kids complete questions they can flip the pancakes to the 'cooked' side. I made this version for literacy group where we are working on identifying letter/sound correlations. You can make articulation, language, fluency, social, or grammar versions!

The freebie is available here. I printed them front and back but if you don't have that option, just cut and glue them! Enjoy! Leave a comment and let me know how you use them!

License Plates Galore!

Sometimes you find very unexpected treasures in the thrift store bins. Today's post is based on just that! This summer I found a package of these mini license plates at my local Goodwill. I thought they were so cool and I grabbed them and put them in my 'make something awesome with these pile!'

 I decided to print out a map of the USA and use it with my upper elementary students! This summer I just have a couple of older students but I'll let you know how I've used them so far!

 For a student working on articulation carryover of /r/ we put all the plates into a bucket. As he pulled the plates, he had to identify the state and find it on the map. We used ink daubers to cover the states we found. If he said it correctly, he used orange to mark the state and he scored a point. If he needed prompts, I used purple to cover the state and I earned a point! I love incorporating other content areas into the speech room so for my 4th grade student this was a great summer review in geography!

The other student I used this activity with is a student who is currently working on language objectives. They include sequencing, comprehension, developing short stories, etc. We pulled the plates one at a time. We marked them on the map as though we were on a road trip. For each state, she had to indicate an activity we could do in that state! I stacked the deck so that we started with the Ohio plate (since that's where we are!) Then we went to Florida (Disney!), Louisiana (swamps), Colorado (skiing), and so on! We drew the map and then used the ipad to video our story retell.

I plan to use it as a reinforcer activity in my mixed groups this year. I think I will divide the map into regions for each student. I also  plan to use it with one of my social groups. I have some 4th and 5th graders who have been working on the idea of persuasion. Each student will draw a plate and that will be the state they focus on. We can do a little research on the ipad and then they can make a persuasive argument to the group. Then we can compare and contrast their states.

How would you use these mini license plates?


I really have no idea where to find these. I googled it, but didn't find any matches. All the plates say 1988 on them, so I'm guessing they're not made anymore.