eSkills Learning: Parts of Speech and Compound Words by Applicable2U
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 8:53PM 
Parts of Speech and Compound Words
Over the past several months, eSkills Learning has been hard at work to expand their collection of educational apps. The eSkills Learning team have designed BINGO like apps that relate to core curriculum standards in the areas of: Language Arts, Reading Comprehension, Math and Algebra Video apps. Both Parts of Speech and Compound Words can be played on any Apple device running iOS 3.2 or later. The applications may be pricey compared to other educational apps out on the market, however, the eSkills Learning team is devised of members with over 30 years of educational experiences. Their goal is to motivate and challenge those using their applications. The academic end results that a parent or teacher will see in their child or student after having played will be worth the download. Through this game format, students won’t even realize that they are learning, reinforcing and reviewing for their next language arts lesson or even a state preparation exam.
What truly amazes Applicable2U about the integration of the eSkills Learning apps is how the use of a mobile device can change an educational setting while meeting a variety of standards. In their About section of their website, they clearly indicate that the design of these two apps and all others were built with the Common Core Standards in mind. When visiting the Common Core State Standards website, I came across a general key point under Language “the standards expect that students will grow their vocabularies through a mix of conversations, direct instruction, and reading. The standards will help students determine word meanings, appreciate the nuances of words, and steadily expand their repertoire of words and phrases.” At each grade level, this key point will be met and will be developed upon over time. Through the use of various levels of difficulty and multiple ways of playing (single and multi-player and practice mode), each return BINGO experience can be different, without a sense of feeling that there is no reason to return. With a brief set of directions on each question, users will read a sentence and fill in the blank with one of three choices as they practice parts of speech and compounds words. Both applications will challenge the user as they game for a reason. Below are some highlights of each application:
Parts of Speech
- Levels of Play – Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Pronouns, Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions and Interjections
- A collection of real world images that students can make connections too
- Improve their visual discrimination skills as they locate pieces on a board
- It is important to note that there will need to be pre-teaching/direct instruction done prior to using this application on definitions of the various parts of speech that the app will focus in on
- Games are not timed during the single and practice mode to alleviate undue stress on the user(s)
- Integration of multiple devices as they safely connect with one another via the devices Bluetooth
- Practice mode gives the user control over how many questions they will need to answer. There is no BINGO board in this mode of play.
- Parts of Speech Lite version has 200 questions
- Parts of Speech Full Classroom Version has 400 questions
- Developer support is provided for parents and teacher in a Teacher’s Guide
Compound Words
- Levels of Play - Locating the 2nd Half of the Compound Word – Easy Vocabulary, Locating the 1st Half of the Compound Word – Easy Vocabulary, Locating the 2nd Half of the Compound Word – Harder Vocabulary, Locating the 1st Half of the Compound Word – Harder Vocabulary
- Through game play, users will be increasing their word recognition skills, the ability to look at words in many parts and the development of vocabulary as they listen, speak and write.
- Compound Words Lite version has 100 compound word questions in total
- Compound Words Full Classroom version has 400 compound word questions in total
- Developer support is provided for parents and teacher in a Teacher’s Guide
Overall, Applicable2U continues to be pleased with the educational apps that eSkills Learning has to offer. Depending on your child or students level of need in learning or reinforcing either of these two topics will determine the academic approach that will be taken. For some it may be challenging, so working alongside a higher level partner might be useful so as to differentiate when needed. A note to the developers, in a future update, might it be possible to include an option for the device to read sentences when necessary. Although direct instruction will be provided, could users tap on an unknown part of speech, causing a help window to pop up for further support. Finally, within the practice mode, has your team thought about generating a short report which shows how that student did during that session.
If you would like to learn more about eSkills Learning, please visit their website here. As mentioned in the brief overview of each application, there are two available versions. When making this decision, do not look at the dollar value, look at how it will support and guide your child academically. To begin adding Parts of Speech Full Class version to your iTunes library, simply click here. To add Compound Words Full Classroom version to your iTunes library, simply click here.
Reviewers website: www.applicable2u.wordpress.com
Recommendation: I swore my first review for IEAR would not be a game. However as I looked at apps for potential review this month, I kept coming back to Depict. If you are familiar with Pictionary, then you will understand Depict. When you launch Depict you can choose to play a Quick Match or with Play with Friends (which I will get back to in a minute). In an education setting, I would avoid the Quick Match as that throws you into a game with a variety of people that you have no control over.