How Can Teachers Use It?
If students have trouble grasping the concept of building sentences through proper word choices and organization, Sentence Maker can provide customized practice to meet them at their current level of understanding. Change the settings and even add your own items on the paid version (pictures, sentences, voice, and languages other than English) to customize Sentence Maker to students' needs.
Invite students to watch you complete a few sentences, talk about details in the pictures, and take a turn themselves. Demonstrate how kids can use the same basic sentence structure but include different words to construct new meanings. Kids can stay with this activity for quite some time, as new sentences continue to appear as long as desired.
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What's It Like?
Sentence Maker can help kids learn the basics of word pairing and sentence structure. A crisp, simple photo acts as the subject of the sentence and appears along with scattered words that are used to create the sentence. Grayscale tiles for each word line the bottom of the screen in sentence order. Kids need to read each scattered word (or tap and have it read to them by the narrator), then place words in proper order. If they don't move the word to its match, the app makes a "boing" sound and the word won't fit into that spot. Once words are matched, the narrator speaks the entire sentence so kids can hear how it flows. Sentence Maker includes multiple custom settings on both the free and paid version (more on the paid version) to increase written language understanding.
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Is It Good For Learning?
Sentence Maker provides a direct, visual, adaptable way for kids to practice word pairing and sentence making. The real-life images of actions and objects (such as a kid swimming, a beautiful door, or a baby smiling) are pleasant and relatable. The letter tile and word grouping format is easy to recognize and understand. While there is some inclusion of images of people of both genders, as well as different ages and races, a broader diversity of pictures would increase the app's relatability. Users can add their own images on the paid version. Settings can be customized to fit each kid's needs, including using only word pairs, giving hints, and deleting or adding images and sentences.
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