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Key Word Kids

Key Word Kids
Features

Price

$59.99

Age Range

Early Childhood & Lower Primary

App Type

Learning App

Version Reviewed

1.3

Android Available?

Is Android Available

Lite Version Available?

Is a Lite Version Available

Help Provided?

Is Help Provided
Sharing
Email
Bloom's Thinking Process
CreatingBlooms Creating
EvaluatingBlooms Evaluating
AnalysingBlooms Analysing
ApplyingBlooms Applying
UnderstandingBlooms Understanding
RememberingBlooms Remembering
Adaptability
Includes animation
Includes recorded voice
Add own voice
Includes text
Includes images
Review Comments
Key Word Kids gives young children practise with both comprehension (oral or reading) and expressive language. Key Word Kids puts language learning into it's normal context. The child interacts with Stephanie, James and the animals during everyday actions such as washing the animals, throwing balls and giving objects. Young children will be delighted when the animals move and say animals sounds when they follow the instructions correctly. Children can create their own stories and record their voice in the unique expressive language section.
 
Key Word Kids is based on the UK Derbyshire Program. This program emphasises the learning of key words in sentences. Key words are the words in a sentence which carry information. So in a scene with an elephant, zebra, water and grass, the instruction "make the elephant get some grass" contains two key words. There are four graded levels from which to choose.
 
Level Check: This is a very useful preassessment which will guide you towards the appropriate starting level for the child.
Vocabulary: This is an Australian app so it has kangaroos and koalas which the children adore. It also has Australian vocabulary (e.g. biscuit/cookie).
Voice: The voice is a female and is quite clear and easy to understand. The pronunciations are Australian e.g. zebra.
Movement: The child needs to either tap or drag/swipe objects. There is a clever icon in the top right hand corner of the screen which shows the child how many taps are required or when to drag.
 
LANGUAGE OR READING COMPREHENSION
Before you begin, you can choose if you wish the child to work on receptive language (hearing the instructions) or reading comprehension (reading the instructions) or both. This is done by choosing "voice only", "voice and text" or "text only" in the settings. This can be changed at any time by selecting the pause button.
 
People, animals and objects are shown in scenes such as a bedroom, beach, farmyard and outback and the African savannah. The child hears or reads the instruction. Instructions can be skipped by tapping the "skip" button. This is useful for children who have previously had success on this instruction. If the child misses the instruction, the "replay" button will replay the instruction.
 
The developers have included an "Animation Tree". This pops up next to Stephanie or James to give children a choice of one of three actions.  
 
2 word level: objects, verbs, possessives, Wh questions (which, where's, who), colour and size adjectives, negation
3 word level: same as 2 word level with the addition of intransitive verbs (verb without an object), functions of objects, prepositions
4 word level: same as 3 word level with the addition of  relative pronouns, 'and',
5 word level: same as 4 word level with the addition of "and" phrases, noun lists, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, passive voice, pronouns
  
EXPRESSION
This is a free play area which provides many opportunities to practise expressive language and verbal imitation skills.
 
The child chooses a scene. All of the objects, animals and people relating to the scene are shown. These are shown over two scenes and the child will need to be told to tap the down arrow to find more animals and people. Children can choose people and animal doing a range of actions. Great for teaching verbs.
 
The child can choose one of more of these items to create their own scene. Then they can free play with the items, moving them around the screen while recording their words, sentences or story by tapping on the microphone. Unfortunately, you can't keep the recordings.
 
This section could be used for a wide variety or language goals. Children could practice making stories, sentence structure, grammar or verbal imitation. I also see it's potential for vocabulary building. There are very few apps which focus on verbs and this app could be used for teaching a range of verbs. I played this with two young children who had enormous fun pretending to be the teacher and recording instructions for the other child to follow.
 
 
GAMES
All of the games are interactive, fast paced and fun. The child hears boppy music and has fun interacting with the games. Scores are given so the child can try to better their score each time they play.
 
Bubble Pop: The child pops the coloured bubbles which fly around the screen.
Toy Beat: The robot, monkey and bear dance up a storm as the child taps on the coloured stars. The more the child taps, the faster they dance.
Colour Machine: Coloured balls bounce around and the child drags the balls into their matching coloured boxes.
Water Balloons: "Watch out for the water balloons". The child uses the arrows to move Stephanie or James around so they don't give hit by the falling balloons. This is a little tricky to work out the first time you play the game, but children appear to learn it quickly.
Ball Smash: The child smashes all the bouncy balls and hears them pop.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Use Rank (*)
Reading Comprehension Ranked 1st of 23
Sentences Ranked 1st of 13
Language Comprehension Ranked 1st of 27
Top Apps for Speech Pathologists Ranked 1st of 16

(*) This app has been ranked according to its' effectiveness to achieve the learning goals and strategies listed. Some apps may rank highly for achieving a specific use and lower for other uses. Some students will learn and engage with one app more than others, because of the individual nature of us all.

Learning App
Learning apps are designed for a specific purpose. The authors claim to teach a goal, skill or concept.
Bloom's Thinking Process
Bloom's Taxonomy is classification system used to explain the behaviours important in learning. Apps range from simple memory tasks such as flashcards apps through to creative apps which ask students to create an original story or video.
Bloom's Creating
The student creates new ideas, products or ways of viewing things. Activities include making, animating, designing, constructing, planning, producing and inventing.
Bloom's Evaluating
The student justifies a decision or course of action. Activities include counting to check, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting and judging.
Bloom's Analysing
The student breaks the information into parts to explore understandings and relationships. Activities include explaining, ordering, inferring, comparing and organising.
Bloom's Applying
The student uses the information in a new situation. Activities include implementing, carrying out, using, illustrating, classifying and categorising.
Bloom's Understanding
The student comprehends the new information. Activities include describing, predicting showing understanding use a multiple choice.
Bloom's Remembering
The student recalls information they know. Activities include matching, 'fill in the blank', making a choice, answering using a multiple choice, naming a group.
Learning Connection
How well does the app teach the targeted skill or concept? This is the area where we refer to current research and pedagogy to evaluate the efficacy of the app.
Authenticity
Authenticity looks at the manner in which skills are learnt. Authentic apps use real life or genuine activities. Students learn in context rather than in a contrived or rote fashion (such as flashcards).
Feedback
Feedback needs to be specific and result in improved performance. Feedback should be supportive and encouraging rather than negative. Data should be available to support decision making.
Differentiation
Differentiation is the ability to customise the app to suit the student. The ability to record you voice, customise text, add pictures and alter settings enables individualisation of the app.
User Friendliness
User friendliness is a measure of how well a student can use the app independently. Some apps are simply intuitive to use. Others include audio or visual prompts which support the student.
Motivation
All apps are engaging the first time they are played. However, students with diverse learning needs may need to return to the app many times. Motivating apps offer rewards,games or incentives.
Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is reading for meaning. Strategies include making connections (to yourself, people and situations), questioning, visualising, inferring, determining importance (the big idea) and summarising and synthesising.
Sentences
There are rules which govern how words are put together to form a sentence. The student practises saying a whole sentence with correct grammar and vocabulary.
Language Comprehension
Language comprehension is the ability to understand and then apply the language you have heard. Also see apps for Questions and Reading Comprehension.
Top Apps for Speech Pathologists
This is a list of the Top Apps for Speech Pathologists

Domain Score Details
Learning Connection 4
Key Word Kids is an excellent app for language learning and has extensive content and potential for teaching children a wide variety of language goals. Teachers and parents will appreciate the four levels of increasing difficulty and the feedback and prompting to encourage children to try again.
Authenticity 4
The comprehension section is essentially about making a choice. The child hears or reads the instruction and chooses the people, animals or objects from the choices provided. The expressive language section is the creative part of this app. The possibilities for creating language tasks and activities are endless.
Feedback 3
The feedback provided is one of the best features of this app. There are no buzzes or red crosses in this app. When correct, the child hears praise, a positive sound and a colourful ball animation. Feedback is sometimes provided by the narrator and sometimes by the animals or Stephanie and James. When incorrect, a neutral sound is heard and a white hand appears to visually prompt the child towards the correct response. Raw data can be emailed.
Differentiation 2
Instructions can be voice and text, voice only or text only. The background music played during the menu can be turned off. The adult can choose the frequency of the reward game - after 5, 15, 25 responses.
User Friendliness 3
Most children would need some assistance to understand this app on their first attempt. My students needed support knowing whether to tap or drag, but quickly referenced the visual hint in the corner. It would be useful to have a way of knowing how many items the child has completed by including a progress bar.
Motivation 4
My students really enjoy this app. The games are fun are will be very popular with young children. The focus of the games on colours and matching certainly suits the preferences of many of my students with autism.
From the App Store
iTunes logo

Developer

Language and Learning Steps Pty Ltd

App Store Rating

(from 4 reviews)

Current Version Rating

(from 4 reviews)

Current Version

1.4
App 1st Screenshot
App 2nd Screenshot
App 3rd Screenshot
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App 5th Screenshot

Developer's Description
"Great app for practising expressive and receptive language skills and following directions." - The iMums

Key Word Kids is an educational therapy program app, supporting children's language development by increasing their understanding of instructions through Key Words.

As a child visits various scenes, they must listen, retain information from increasingly complex sentences, and act out instructions to improve their language comprehension skills.
Join Key Word Kids, Steffy and James in hundreds of fun scenarios, with optional text for reading comprehension, a 'level check' feature that provides a recommended starting level, 5 fun mini games and an expressive recordable freeplay mode. It is loved by all children but has been designed for those aged 2 to 8 years with Language Disorder or Delay, Apraxia of Speech, Autism Spectrum Disorder and learners of English as a second language.

The Comprehension activities on the Key Word Kids App are graded in levels of difficulty, using a Key Word (Information Carrying Word) approach, based on the Derbyshire Language Scheme (Masidlover, 1982, used with permission). This is the most widely used intervention program used by speech language therapists in the UK for children under 7 years. It is also popular in Australia and New Zealand. Key Word Kids was created by Janet Eales, Guidance Counsellor/Special Educator/Certified Play Therapist and Sue Park, Certified Practising Speech Pathologist, who have worked together for over 30 years.

By first using the 'Level Check' to determine a child's starting level and then progressing through word levels that gradually increase in complexity, children will learn to listen to a sentence, retain information from it and then follow directions using the 'on screen' items in different, fun and engaging scenes. Reading comprehension can also be practised by switching audio phrases to text in the settings menu.

A selection of short mini-games are included to reward users between Key Word Sentences which also increase a child's attention and interest in the program overall.
The Expression mode allows children to practise what they have learnt and even record their own stories or voiced instructions for their friend, parent or speech pathologist to follow, or just use it for FUN!

For iPad 2, iPad 3 and iPad mini - NOT original iPad. Only available in the Apple App store.

FEATURES:
○ No in-app purchases or links to social media
○ Easy to use
○ Quick level check suggests Key Word starting level
○ Teaches Comprehension and Expression of language
○ Records Expression
○ Carefully graded steps
○ eg 2 key words 'Wash the horse' (Wash/Brush...the horse/pig/dog);
○ eg 3 key words 'Make Teddy dance to the bed (Teddy/Monkey/Robot...dance/jump/walk.../bed/table/chair)
○ eg 4 key words 'Stick the gold star on the flag in the water' (gold/silver...star/diamond...flag/surfboard....sand/water)
○ eg Level 5 focuses on complex sentences rather than key words eg 'Make James get the leaves and feed them to the giraffe by the mud' (James/Steffy...leaves/apple...giraffe/zebra..mud/tree)
○ Clear visual pictures and cues
○ Varied interaction types (tap/drag)
○ Gives immediate feedback on performance
○ Error correction and prompts
○ Contains clear speech in neutral English
○ Scores for discreet trial training
○ Provides fun activities and rewards
○ Suits a range of language learners from 1+years to older children with language support needs
○ Teaches concepts
○ Teaches early grammar at sentence and word level
○ Unique verb animation trees
○ Designed for children with speech and language difficulties, attention/memory/processing difficulties, typically developing children and those learning English as a second language.
○ Made in Australia-scenes include Australian outback, African Safari, Farm, Beach and House
○ Can be used with individuals and small groups
○ Can be used independently or with Speech Pathologist/teacher/assistant/parent/carer

Disclaimer: The evaluations and rankings information provided here are based solely on the opinion of the author and are for informational purposes only. Families should seek professional advice before making decisions regarding interventions for their child.