I recently got the opportunity to review Virtual Speech Center's Verb News app. I was excited because I have SO MANY kids with goals for verbs (mostly irregular and regular past tense). Since this can be a rather tedious and frustrating grammar skill to address, having extra fun tools like apps can definitely help increase the motivation factor!
This is what the home screen looks like:
You have the opportunity to work on: simple present, present continuous, simple past, and simple future tense. There are a total of 190 regular and irregular verbs.
You can also choose between presentation method including: auditory bombardment, fill in, and make up your own sentences.
Below is an example of the fill in task:
You meet Andrew who is the newsroom anchor. There are 4 different movies that help explain the four verb tenses. I found this helpful because a lot of my kids learn visually. A fabulous feature is the "reward," where the child can record a newscast of himself/herself and then watch it.
What I Liked:
-variety of verbs included
-the kids liked being able to record themselves and then watch it
-different answer platforms (auditory bombardment, fill in, etc) which helps easily differentiate for students on different levels
What I Would Change:
-Fill In Task: for the choices that included an auxiliary (ex. is baking), there was a really long pause in between the words, which was sometimes distracting
-some of the verbs were lesser known to my students, so I needed to explain (ex. applauded) - this was also a plus because we discussed synonyms!
-I would like to see a prompt for the newscast, so that the kids can practice using the past tense (ex. report on a cat that got stuck in a tree, etc)
If you are interested in this app, you can purchase it for $9.99 in the App Store. Make sure you check out Virtual Speech Center's other apps too!
Disclaimer: The app was provided to me. No other compensation was received. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.
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