So excited to show you one of the newest apps from Smarty Ears! Lots of my little ones are working on basic concepts, and this app is perfect for finding out exactly what they need. Check out Basic Concepts Skills Screener!
This is the home screen when you open the app. The lefthand column holds the list of students and the righthand column shows their screening info.
The upper left tab is the info tab. Tap it and click “tutorial” to watch an overview of how the app works. There is also a test manual that opens in pdf format.
The settings tab allows you to choose whether you want to test in English or Portuguese.
To get started tap “add student” and enter the student’s information.
You can then select if you want the student to complete a full screening of 79 questions or a quick screening of 30 questions. The full screening is supposed to take about 15 minutes to administer and the quick screening about 5 minutes.
Both screenings are similar in format. The test questions are receptive and multiple choice.
An audio voice gives the question prompt and the student selects the picture that correctly corresponds. Click “next” to go to the next question. The app also keeps track on which question you are on with the tally at the bottom left of the screen.
This screening assessments targets the following basic concepts and provides detailed data on each:
- Comparative
- Quantitative
- Spatial
- Temporal
- It’s great to help in assessing pre and post therapy or interventions in basic concept skills.
- It’s very user-friendly and straightforward – which is great for the little ones.
- The concepts targeted are appropriate and results are compared to what a child should be learning at his/her age.
- Results can be printed and attached to any other screening or report.
- Good price for an assessment app.
- I wish I could stop and start the test again if we were interrupted.
- In the future I’d like to see some sort of pass/fail instead of just a description of what the child could or could not do.
It looks like a great app! The thing I’d suggest is to have a bilingual option for Spanish. I don’t mean a separate Spanish app though. I mean having the choice of giving instructions in Spanish or English, and being able to switch between the languages DURING the assessment. Many of my kindergarten referrals are for students who speak Spanish at home, and are learning English. Being able to compare their Spanish to their English would be INVALUABLE as a tool to use for the language learning vs. language disability question. If the app had Spanish, I’d buy it for sure!
What a great idea!! That would make it way more awesome for sure!! 🙂