Rosetta Stone Kids Lingo Word Builder would work nicely in a bilingual kindergarten class, giving all students a challenging activity that can grow as they do. In a 1-to-1 environment, teachers can monitor each student's progress. In a classroom with only one or a few tablets, though, teachers could offer the app as a station for kids to work on. Since kids do pronounce the Spanish words aloud and the microphone needs to pick up on pronounications, however, kids will need a quiet area to work, which may be tricky in many classrooms.
Continue readingEditor's Note: Rosetta Stone Kids Lingo Word Builder is no longer available for download.
Rosetta Stone Kids Lingo Word Builder is created by the developers of the Rosetta Stone language programs. The two-part app includes American English phonics and Spanish vocabulary. In Word Builder, kids progress through three levels of English phonics. In the first and second levels, they drag letters into place to create real words in the consonant-vowel-consonant format. In the third level, they drag correct letters into place to build a specific word. In Speak & Learn, they choose from word themes, see an animation of a word to demonstrate its meaning, hear it in Spanish, and then say the word themselves. In-app purchases were included in the past and could be included in the future, but as of this review, all content is free.
As kids progress through the word banks, games become more challenging, advancing from filling in the first letter of a word to building complete words, and from hearing instructions in English and repeating a Spanish word to hearing all instructions in Spanish. The content itself is great, and progression through the skills -- especially progressing to hearing instructions in Spanish -- keeps kids challenged. Teachers can manually set levels to increase the challenge, or kids can play and advance on their own. To access the Parent's Corner, teachers have to share their email address. Only then can they manually adjust challenge levels for each activity and see a progress report. Pronunciation accuracy can be adjusted in the Parent's Corner to easy, normal, or hard, but even the hardest level lets mispronunciations slide. Kids earn toys to display on a shelf as they complete levels, but the toys play no part in the activities -- they seem tacked-on rather than integrated into the learning process.