Teach Through Apps: Shuttersong

Age level: All age levels

Description: Shuttersong is a simple, free app that allows you to easily combine digital images with sound and then share them. You can select a song clip from your music library or record your live voice or sound through your phone. It also works with pre-existing photos.

Skills & Modifications: The simplicity of this app allows for you to work on a variety of skills in a format that is highly motivating for many learners. 

• Before and After – This is a great tool for helping learners understand before and after by taking a series of photos and having the learner describe each photo. You can do this for daily living skills, such as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The learner can photograph each step and record what that step is. They can use it as a visual prompt to respond to questions such as “What do you do before you spread the jelly?”
• Expressive Language/Picture Comprehension – You can create photos and have the learner describe what is happening in the photo. It’s also helpful in working with learners to create novel responses. With one learner I saved photos of scenes (such as a playground scene or a still from a cartoon), then had the learner record one sentence about what was happening. The learner would listen to his/her response, then record a new response.
• Identifying Emotions – I like this app for having learners describe a person’s emotion and why the character is feeling that way. For example, the learner will look at a photo of a child sitting on the ground and crying with a scrape on his knee. Then the learner can record a statement about it, such as “The boy is sad because his knee hurts.”
• Summarizing/Recalling an Event – For learners who struggle with recalling recent events, this can be a helpful tool for them. I especially like that the learner can be responsible for taking the photos and narrating them. For example, if a family goes to a museum, the learner can take photos of different things they see and record a brief narration about each photo. Later the learner can share the photos and use the recordings as prompts if needed.

Pros: The app is highly motivating for many of my learners, which increases opportunities to practice difficult skills or low level skills with more age-appropriate materials.

Cons: None! Just be sure to take a little time to familiarize yourself with the app. It’s relatively intuitive, but you should understand all aspects of it before introducing it to learners.

Cost: free You should invest in this app if: you have learners that need practice with any of the skills described above, you are a parent seeking ways to help your child with recall, or you are seeking ways to motivate your learners with expressive language skills.

ABLLS: G39, G42, H41

VB-MAPP: Tact 9, Tact 10, Tact 14, Intraverbal 14

Teach Through Books: Pete’s A Pizza by William Steig

Age level: Preschool, Early Elementary

Description: So a William Steig is making his second appearance here at Teach Through. Pete’s A Pizza is a simple story about a boy who’s feeling pretty gloomy because it’s raining outside. His father decides to cheering him up by making him into a pizza. The story then takes the reader through the process of Pete being kneaded and stretched as dough, tossed like dough, and having pretend ingredients placed on him. It beautifully illustrates and example of imaginative play, and can be directly extended after the book.

Skills & Modifications: The primary way that I use this book is through extending it’s concept after reading it. I stole this idea from a teaching assistant I had the pleasure of working with several years ago. To extend the idea of the book, simply re-enact the book by making your student into a pizza like Pete’s father does to him in the story.

• Imaginative Play – For my students who enjoy stretches, squeezes, and gross motor activities; this can be a great way to motivate them to engage in imaginative play activities. In the book, Pete’s father actually puts items representing pizza ingredients on him, however I typically just pretend to be placing ingredients.
• Manding (Requesting) – Several of my students especially love the portion where I stretch, squeeze, roll, and toss them like dough. I am able to get them to mand for all of these actions because they are so highly motivated by the activity. I also get the students to mand for ingredients. I can ask them what they like on their pizza, or I can allow them to make a silly pizza (such as one with smelly shoes or worms for toppings.) I only allow the silly ingredients if the child is participating in the humorous aspect and truly understands that those ingredients do not belong on a pizza.
• Summarizing/Recalling a story – For some students, I will do the interactive activity of “making” them a pizza. Afterward, I will ask them what I put on them. For example, I’ll ask “What ingredients did I put on you to make you really tasty?” or “Did I use pepperonis?” While initially playing the game, I try to use different motor movements and/or sound effects for each ingredient so I can use that as a gestural or verbal prompt to help them summarize the activity.
• Peer Play – I have also used this with students to encourage peer play and taking turns. I will “make” two pizzas simultaneously and trade turns placing ingredients on each pizza. This is a fantastic way to engage in peer play for students who are highly motivated by the pizza activity but hesitant to engage in parallel play or play interactions with peers. You can increase the language and social play expectation by having your student and his/her peer take turns being the pizza-maker.

Pros: I love using the kinesthetic activity to extend the lesson. My preschool students especially respond well.

Cons: It’s William Steig! There are no cons!

Cost: $7.99 You should invest in this book if: Your child enjoys motor activities and sensory activities such as squeezes and stretches.

ABLLS: F6, F8, F11

VB-MAPP: Listener Responding 5, Social Behavior 4, Social Behavior 5, Mand 7, Mand 8, Social Behavior 9, Social Behavior 14

Teach Through Apps: Toontastic

Age level: Early elementary, upper elementary, middle school, high school
Description: Let me start by saying that I love this app. It is highly motivating for a wide range of students, and can be used to teach both low- and high-level learners. At it’s most basic, this app allows students to draw, animate, and share a cartoon. It splits the cartoon into five scenes: setup, conflict, challenge, climax, and resolution. For each scene, the child can choose the setting and characters, then click “Start animation” for that scene. They can move the characters around the screen AND record dialogue and sound effects. After creating each scene, they can add music to each scene, a movie title and their own name as the director.  Then they can label what their story is about from a menu within the app.
Modifications: I use this app for a variety of skill levels. For some of my early learners, I may create a story on my own and use it to teach a specific skill, especially for social skills for my students with autism or language delays. For some students I will create the entire story except for the resolution, have them listen to the story, then have them create the resolution on their own. The app also easily works for teaching story structure.
Students with autism or language delays can use this app to practice a conversation between characters. Because you can record dialogue for each scene, they can listen to what they have said and make improvement/adjustments on their own. I also work on requesting with these students if we are creating an animation together. I will ask them where they want me to move my character and require them to use adjectives, prepositions, and/or adverbs in their response. Additionally, because this is a highly motivating app for typically developing students, it can be a great tool for initiating age-appropriate peer play.
Finally, it is a fantastic skill for teaching recognition of emotion to older students with autism. Identifying the emotion the character might be feeling, having them respond appropriately to that emotion, and identifying music that would match that emotion are all important skills to practice.
Skills: Intraverbal skills, Story structure, Sequence, Retelling a story, Summarizing, Picture comprehension, Problem solving, Peer play
Pros: This is very user friendly, highly motivating, easy to modify, and a great tool for teaching a variety of comprehension and language skills.
Cons: After you have created a story and want to re-watch it, it is a little too easy to accidentally record over your initial dialogue. When you want to watch the animation, instead of pushing “Start Animation” you should push the clapboad in the upper right hand corner.
Cost: Free, with in-app purchases of additional scenes and characters. Should I buy this? Did I mention it’s free?
ABLLS: F16, F17, F22 G2, G10,  G13, G21, G39, G43, H48
VB-MAPP: Social Behavior & Social Play 12, Social Behavior & Social Play 13, Social Behavior & Social Play 14, Social Behavior & Social Play 15, Intraverbal 13, Intraverbal 14, Intraverbal 15, Linguistic Structure 15

Teach Through Apps: Lil’ Red

Age level: Preschool, Early Elementary
Description: This ipad app is a little pricey, but really worth it. It’s a unique interactive illustration of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. While it has music and beautiful images, it does not have any words.
Modifications: I sometimes use this app for listening skills instead of for telling a story. So I may tell the student to “touch the apple” or “find the bird.” For a student functioning at a higher level, I may ask them to “find an animal” or “show me something that grows from the ground.”
Skills: Identifying problems and solutions, summarizing a story, describing pictures, tacting (labeling) items, recalling a story you’ve heard before
Pros: I love working with children on this app. Children seem to particularly enjoy the aspects that are interactive (such as touching a bird to make it fly, or touching the wolf to see what he is thinking.) It also demonstrates some of the basic skills for comprehension without requiring reading.
Cons: Some of the artistic choices are not as intuitive as I would like. You should definitely look through it on your own first so you can prepare what questions you would want to ask your particular student or child, and so you can prompt your student or child with what parts of the screen to touch to get the full “cause and effect” aspect of the app.
Cost: $3.99 (available in itunes) Should I buy this? As a teacher, I find it valuable because I use it for many students. As a parent, it really depends on how much use you will be able to get out of it. I think it is unique and interesting. Occasionally, it goes on sale, so it may be one you want to watch before shelling out four bucks for a single app.
ABLLS: C10, C14, C19, C37, C38, C39, C43, G4, G12, G15, G16, G17, G35, G40, G47, J1, J2, J3, J4, J13, J18
VB-MAPP: Tact 5M, Tact 6M, Listener 5M, Listener 10M, LRFFC 10M, Intraverbal 13M, Intraverbal 14M, Linguistics 15M