September 30, 2013

Appy Hour: Story Wheel

an app review of one of my all-time favorites: Story Wheel

Do you ever watch The Price is Right? Wouldn't you just love the chance to spin that huge wheel and try to earn a spot in the Showcase Showdown?! Well, there's an app that lets me get a little taste of that big spin, and it's one of my all-time favorite apps to use in speech therapy. I'm talking about Story Wheel!


The Basics:
Story Wheel is a great way to help students build their understanding of how a story comes together, foster creativity, and improve overall oral language skills!


You can add 1-4 students to your story. During each turn, students spin the wheel and are given a random picture. Then they get to record themselves developing and adding to the story with each new picture that is spun. Each story uses 12 pictures. The full app has various themes, including Pirates, Knights and Princesses, and Outer Space!


How I Use It:
Language Goals - excellent for increasing MLU, forming complete sentences, picture descriptions, using describing or action words


Narrative Language - obviously, Story Wheel is an excellent app for building a complete story, including story grammar elements (characters, setting, cohesive beginning/middle/ending events, problem, resolution, etc.)

 
Articulation -  great for seeing how students can carryover their awesome speech sounds into structured sentences or storytelling/conversation contexts


Fluency - students can practice their fluency-building strategies at the sentence level or storytelling/conversation levels



 Good/Not-So-Good:
* I love being able to save stories and share them with teachers/parents via email.
* I love the fun themes that are available (I think the Pirates theme has the best pictures!)
* I'm so glad you have the option of re-recording each picture. Sometimes with my students we discuss their first recording, then go back and try to improve upon it the second time.
* I love how versatile this app is! I use it with almost all my students at some point.
* However, I wish I could select the number of photos in each story. For some sessions/students, 12 pictures can take a long time to complete.

Overall:
I'm a huge fan of Story Wheel! It's versatile and can be used with many ages and goal areas. And it's fun - my students love it too!

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Story Wheel is created by EverAge Apps and is available in the App Store (full version currently $2.99 at the time of this posting; theme packs available for $0.99; free 'lite' version also available).

Disclaimer: I was not compensated for this app review. I simply think it's an awesome, useful, and versatile app that should be in the hands of every speech-language pathologist.



Leave a Comment: If you could be on any game show, which one would it be?
I would dominate at Wheel of Fortune!

5 comments:

  1. Hi Abby,
    I am the developer of Story Wheel. Thank you for your kind words on our app. In response, I wanted to let you know that at any time when creating a story, you can click the "Done" button, and save your story. You do not need to add all 12 pictures. That is just the max.

    Thanks,

    Andrew Wilcox

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    1. Thanks for reading Andrew. I'm so glad you let me know about stopping the story early. I feel like that's a "Duh, why didn't I think of that?" issue :) Love your app!

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  2. I have a 5 year old Apraxic son and can't wait to try this App. It says for all ages, but is it tailored for a specific age group? He is in Kindergarten and although his expressive language is very low.. he is above age level in every other "area" of development.

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    1. Tanya, I've used this app with kids of all ages, from preschool to 6th grade. You just need to tailor it to their own abilities. It's hard for me to say without knowing your son, but I think this could be a fun app for him to use to practice his skills. Download the free 'lite' version and see how it goes. Then you can upgrade to the expansion packs later on if you choose. Good luck!

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  3. Thank you for posting this! Is there a version for android? We have a kindle. I'm looking for more bilingual speech materials for our 3 yo son :) Gracias!

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