Product Review: Pirate Talk by Super Duper

Oh that red box! Who doesn't love coming home to find one of these at their door?

When the nice folks at Super Duper contacted me about reviewing one of their products, I was happy to do so!  First, I'd be foolish to say no to an awesome product from Super Duper (yes I knew it would be awesome before even opening the box!). Second, I love getting new materials for my kids.  Third, I know many of you look to bloggers like me to find how what we really think of products and apps!  Here's what was in the box:

The Details:

Pirate Talk: Receptive & Expressive Language Game.
Created by: Sarah Michaels and the Super Duper Staff.
Grade Level: K-5
Description (from Super Duper's website):  Your students are about to embark on a swashbuckling adventure as they sail the high seas with Pirate Talk, the receptive and expressive language skills game! As students respond to each prompt, they move from island to island on the colorful game board and collect gold coins. The prompts reinforce seven essential communication skills:  Sentence Repetition, Answering Questions, Following Directions, Categorizing, Inferencing, Describing, and Social Skills.
Includes:  Game Board, 150 Color-Coded Receptive and Expressive Language Cards(5 subject areas, 30 cards each), Instruction Sheet, 6 Pirate Player Pieces, 100 Gold Coins, and Electronic Spinner (1–3)


A Closer Look:

My son has learned that a box at the door equals something fun.  So when we came home, he begged me to open this one right away!  We opened the box, took out the game board, and checked out the other items:

Notice M's foot anxiously waiting to play!

I skimmed the directions because I prefer games that allow you to fly by the seat of your pants.  I believe that if the directions are too long and complicated, the kids won't want to play the game.  Am I right?  Anywhoo...you can see that the game comes with basic directions and game variations!  This is great for changing things up and using the same materials for multiple sessions, but in new and exciting ways!

After that, I organized the cards.  I think it's a personality requirement for SLPs to love organization and clearly Super Duper is a company of SLPs! The box has a tray that holds your cards and the cards come color coded and with dividers:

The cards have different scenes on the front.  The scenes depict scenarios from 5 different categories:  activities, community, home, school, and people.  Here's a sample card from the "activities" section:

Super Duper really does have great illustrations, don't they?  On the back of each card are the prompts for each target area: Sentence Repetition, Answering Questions, Following Directions, Categorizing, Inferencing, Describing, and Social Skills. I found that we could use the pictures as conversation starters as well.

Notice that some cards allow children to earn "bonus" coins!

Instead of dice, Pirate Talk comes with an electronic game spinner! How cool is this?!? I love that you only have the option of spinning a 1, 2, or 3 and I may just have to use this with other games as well!  The kids loved pushing a button instead of rolling a game die and NOTHING fell on the floor!! :)

What may just be the best part of this game is that it comes with 100 gold coins! I didn't count them, I'm going to take Super Duper's word for it!  Boys and girls were thrilled to play this game and to earn these shiny coins!

Trying it Out:

My son was in love with the game and didn't really want me to bring it to work.  Once he got over that, I brought it to school and tried it out with my kids.  I used it with kids in Preschool and in Second Grade.  We played the traditional version, nothing fancy.  The kids LOVED it! I loved that I could use it in a mixed group and target different objectives with the same cards!  I did find that with larger groups of kids, we weren't able to "finish" the game by returning our pirates back to their home bases, but none of the kids minded. They were happy to count their coins to find the winner.  If you're wondering, 2nd grade loved it as much as the preschoolers.

Bonus Activity:

My super-observant friend Stephanie was quick to make this observation...There are 100 gold coins. New information suggests aiming for 100 articulation trials/session.  See where I'm going with this?  You can use the coins for motivation in an Articulation Challenge!

I made a quick "bank" out of a butter tub, but how much fun would it be to use a treasure chest piggy bank!?!?

The Take-Away:

Pros:

• As a receptive/expressive language game, Pirate Talk has it all.  You can look at a picture scene and ask each type of question, in addition to targeting inferencing and pragmatics.
• Versatility!  The game cards themselves make Pirate Talk versatile, but the adaptability of the game goes beyond that. (See description below)
• Fun! Who doesn't love a pirate theme?!?
• The description on the box says that this game is for Grades K-5, but the box itself says that you can use it with Grades K and up or Ages 4-10.  

Cons:

• I can't think of a single one!

The Bottom Line:
Pirate talk is a fun, engaging addition to your therapy supply closet.  According to the game's description, you can use it to target 7 areas of communication. However, I have found that you can use it for so much more than that!  The game board can be used for an open-ended activity, the spinner can be used to make your game boards (like those from TPT) more fun, and the gold coins can be used to get 100 trials during Articulation Burst therapy!

If you have Pirate Talk, what's your favorite game variation?  If not, what's your favorite product from Super Duper?

App Review: Basic Concepts Skills Screener

Today is the first day of school for preschool and kindergarten in my district (the older grades start a week earlier than the little ones).  I'm excited to see the little faces!  If you don't know, I work primarily with the little guys - preschool and kindergarten.  At that age, so much of what is worked on in early childhood classrooms is also targeted in speech and language therapy.  I so frequently work on comprehension and use of basic concepts.  Because of that, I was so excited to check out Basic Concepts Skills Screener (BCSS) by Smarty Ears Apps!

This app is designed for single player assessment and has two options - the Full Screening or the Quick Screening. The full screening consists of 79 questions and according to the Smarty Ears website, takes 10-15 minutes to administer. The quick screening has 30 questions and is estimated to take approximately 5 minutes.  I'm planning on use the quick screening as part of my baseline data collection for this year.

As with the other Smarty Ears apps, this one is really easy to navigate! When you first open the app, you need to choose a language.  You can use BCSS in English and Portuguese.  (FUN FACT:  My little corner of the world has a very large Portuguese community and many of the students in my district speak both English and Portuguese!).

Under the "Info" tab, you can view a 20-page manual for the BCSS, watch a Video Tutorial, and learn more about the app and Smarty Ears.

Tap the "Add Student" button and enter the child's Name and Date of Birth:

I administered the Screener to my son (don't judge, you know you've tested/screened your own children before!)  Next you choose the full screening or the quick screening.  In the app description, it's estimated that the full screening takes 10-15 minutes and the quick screening takes about 5 minutes.  I opted to go for the full screening.  My son has good attention, is generally cooperative, and has no speech or language delays.  It did take us closer to 20 minutes and he did need encouragement to keep going.  I wanted to tell you this because, if it took him extra time to finish and he needed breaks/encouragement, your language delayed preschoolers might need the same (or even additional) modifications.

During the screening, the student is shown four pictures and asked to touch one based on a description (e.g., "Touch the balloon that is ABOVE the house"):

Here are a few other examples:

In the upper left hand corner of the screen is a "Notes" tab.  You can click this at any point and add notes for your session:

When you are finished, you can see a list of screens that have been created by student:

You can quickly determine progress by looking at the Raw Scores reported, or you can view a full report of your session.  The report includes a description of the BCSS, the child's number of correct responses, number of items attempted, and overall accuracy level:

 It goes on to list the concepts that were answered correctly and incorrectly as well as those that were skipped.  Next is a breakdown of the student's performance by concept type (e.g., comparative, spatial, temporal, etc.):

There is also a table that depicts the student's mastery of concepts by age level:

And a color coded visual of concepts depicting types that are achieved, emerging, not achieved, and not tested:

And there you have BCSS!  I love screening apps because they're a great way to collect data on your students!  Data is one of the least fun, yet most necessary aspects of our profession.  Many times, the iPad is just motivating enough to get kids to participate in baseline data collection and data collection for progress monitoring.  Working in preschool, I often get students with objectives for following directions and comprehending concepts.  This will be a great way for me to track progress this year!

BCSS can be found in the App Store.  It sells for $14.99.

Do you target basic concepts in your therapy sessions?

Disclaimer:  Smarty Ears provided a copy of BCSS for the purposes of this review. The opinions expressed are mine alone.

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Resource Review: "Language Difference vs. Language Disorder: Assessment and Intervention Strategies for SLPs Working With Bilingual Children"

I don't know about you, but I have many students on my caseload who are bilingual!  We're fortunate in my district to have a few bilingual SLPs to conduct evaluations and determine eligibility (Spanish, Portuguese, and Cape Verdean Creole).  However, it's often the monolingual therapists (like me) who provide the actual service delivery.  I took French in high school, which is fairly useless to me at this point.  The area of Massachusetts in which I live has a strong Portuguese heritage and you can't be from here without knowing some Portuguese words (though usually none you would use around children, lol!)  And because my last school was in a neighborhood with a large Spanish/Mayan population, I have learned some Spanish words and phrases to communicate with those students.  However, I'm always struggling with some of the aspects of servicing bilingual students, including:

• Does this child really have a disability?
• Does this sound occur in Spanish/Quiche/Portuguese?
• Do this child's morpho-syntactic errors require intervention?
• Is this child ready to be dismissed?

Recently I was given the opportunity to read and review an excellent resource - "Language Difference vs. Language Disorder:  Assessment and Intervention Strategies for SLPs Working With Bilingual Children" - created by Tatyana Elleseff, MA, CCC-SLP of Smart Speech Therapy, LLC. 

This product is a 113 slide presentation highlighting "how to provide effective evidence based practice assessments to bilingual children in order to differentiate English Language Learners from bilingual children with true language disorders.  It will also offer recommendations regarding therapeutic interventions with bilingual children with impairments."

Just what I needed!  

Overview of Bilingualism:

This presentation begins with a description of the types of bilingualism, including Simultaneous Bilingual, Sequential Bilingual, Sequential language learners (Majority group), and Sequential language learners (Minority group).  Next comes a list of the advantages of bilingualism for typically developing children as well as the stages of language acquisition for sequential language learners.

After that comes a description of Additive vs. Subtractive Bilingualism.  As you may guess from the names, in Additive Bilingualism the child's home language and culture are valued and developed and the second language is added to the first.  In Subtractive Bilingualism the second language is introduced at the expense of the first, and the first language is negatively impacted.  It seems to me that Additive Bilingualism would be preferred.  It would be lovely if the "powers that be" in the education system provided sufficient supports to make this method a reality in all districts across the country (just my two cents).

Other key points that are explored include the affects of bilingualism on "academic language," communication differences versus disorders, and language characteristics of bilingual children.

Assessment:
Tatyana goes into detail on the challenges and limitations that SLPs face when it comes to assessing bilingual students.  Obvious limitations include the lack of assessment instruments standardized for bilingual populations and the scarcity of bilingual SLPs.  However, Tatyana lists other limitations that I had not previously considered.  She also lists several of the more common assessment instruments (and some lesser known) and lists the considerations SLPs should be aware of when using with bilingual students.  Considerations are provided for gathering case history, assessing fluency and score reporting as well.

Intervention:
In this section, Tatyana covers a variety of methods of intervention including dual language intervention, bilingual approaches to speech remediation, complimentary language intervention, and cross-linguistic approach.  She discusses intervention considerations related to service delivery,  literacy, and phonological awareness as well.  In addition, there is a slide with recommended language activities for bilingual students.  There are also several slides with recommendations for monolingual clinicians who are servicing bilingual students.

Some interesting points:

• More children are growing up learning two or more languages than children who learn only one.
• Best practice does NOT support limiting the child's first language to focus on the second language.
• Communication differences that are affected by the child's first language are part of normal development of the second language.  Communication disorders will be present in the child's first language as well.
• I love the fact that this product contains resources on sound acquisition in other languages.  There's even a handy chart on the sequence of phonological processes to target in Spanish.

This material provides a ton of research and resources to support the information.  Because of the format as a powerpoint slide presentation, I would advise consulting the research that is cited for further information on any of the topics.

Overall, I think this is a valuable resource for SLPs who assess and/or treat children from bilingual homes.  I have definitely learned a lot from all of the resources from Tatyana that I have read!  I would love to see her partner with ASHA to offer CEUs for some of her resources!

Do you service bilingual students?  If so, you're in luck!  Tatyana offered a copy of this resource for me to give away!  To enter to win a copy, use the Rafflecopter below.  You can also purchase this product HERE.  Don't forget to visit Smart Speech Therapy's blog page.  Tatyana is reviewing and giving away a copy of my "Out of This World! Context Clues Activity"!

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