This app is designed to teach language as a shared experience between instructor and learner.  It fosters social and communication skills.  Engage in over 70 language activities to help the learner communicate wants and needs. The activities create observational behaviors the learner can initiate. It helps the learner determine gender, action, possessions, and environment.  It helps one compare and contrast oneself to other children. Comparison helps the learner find commonalities. Contrasting helps identify differences. These observations promote the use of language learned and foster an ability to interact with others. The split screen has two language activities. The instructor uses one side to model the language.  The learner listens and applies the same sentence structure to the other side. Tap the learner feedback of Try again or Good Job to close it. When both activities are correct, and the feedback is closed, select the arrow to turn the page. The app will not advance without the feedback closed.

 

Instruction begins with teaching the learner how to use the app. Spend time in here practicing to compare and contrast shapes. 

 

Shape and color recognition are not required. The learner is tasked to recognize whether the forms are the same or different shape, color or size. For each activity, the instructor should point out how the shapes are the same or different. When the learner is able to compare and contrast shapes, begin making comparisons of children, how the boy and girl are different (hair and clothing). Point out the action of the child, the similarities and differences between the children in the activity, their actions, surroundings and self.  

 

Teach articles (i.e., a, the, this, that, the other, etc.) with boy, girl and baby as the only word for the child in the activity. The target is to get the learner engaging with you and the app. Social Gender Aspect accuracy is not important at this time. If the incorrect gender was used, praise the learner for good talking, then repeat the sentence with the correct gender. Follow through to the end of the 70 activities teaching noun-verb, noun-verb-object, noun-verb-object-place sentence structure.

 

Once learned, return to the first child activity page and Introduce pronouns he, she, it in place of the words boy, girl, baby. This will create a layer of new language built on the learned language. Expand pronouns to possessives.

 

Return to the first child activity page to introduce new verbs. Add descriptors and prepositions. Sentence Builder can be used repeatedly to build layers of language you both use every day. We use color photos of children demonstrating want, have, eat and drink. Below the photo is a sentence strip of colored blocks that make a template for a complete sentence. 

 

The purple box is a place holder for your descriptors and articles (the little words they need to learn like the, a, an, that, this, the other, etc). Children are blue, actions red, objects green, and places yellow. Below the sentence strip, the learner is given a selection of possible nouns, verbs, objects, and places to create a complete sentence. This selection behavior is used to direct the learner to look at the possible word icons, compare and contrast them to the child in the photo and identify the one that best represents the child in the photo. 

 

Once identified, tap the word icon. It moves up to the corresponding colored block in the sentence strip. Do the same for action, object and place to create a complete sentence and visual memory of a complete sentence. The instructor should help the learner compare the possibilities to the child, the action, the object and place in the photo.  

 

Feedback is immediate to maximize learning potential. Praise for talking. Read the sentence like a pictogram, using the words you are teaching. The more layers you build, the more your learner will understand. Teach words you use every day in different settings.