I know you will enjoy this guest post by Katie Kelley, SLP at  peachyspeech.com. Katie’s depth of knowledge on speech therapy apps contributes to her valuable recommendations. Here she is reviewing “Dr. Panda, Teach Me!” which is designed for typically developing children but has potential for use by speech language pathologists.

This week it was all about Dr. Panda.  The app was certainly a hit with nearly every group.  Although the app is designed for younger children (toddlers/preschoolers), I used it at the end of school-aged lessons focused on producing subject + verb + object combinations and past tense verbs.  This is an interactive app that allows you to scroll through different scenes involving a variety of animals and surroundings.  Students touch different objects and animals on the screen prompting an action such as bees flying out of the hive.   In my lessons, I then prompted, “What happened?” to which students were supported to respond with complete sentences using past tense verbs, “The bees buzzed” or for more advanced students, “The bees flew out of the hive.”  A favorite with my students was definitely breaking the ice and watching the polar bear fall into the water.  Contained within the app are activities that target skills such as patterning, matching, numbers, colors, and language concepts same/different and bigger/smaller.  These activities were cute but too easy for my students.  I would love, love for the app to add additional activities for teaching higher level language concepts such as categories,  “Which one doesn’t belong?” or “How do these go together?”  Even activities involving animal descriptions, “What animal lives here?” or “What animal is the fastest?” would be a great addition to the app for early school-aged children.

PRO:

  • Interactive and engaging for students
  • Easy to manipulate
  • Great visuals
  • Provides lots of opportunities to use language
  • Fun enough to be used as a reward
  • Affordable ($1.99)

CON

  • A bit too young for my target population (not a fault of the app just a limitation in my particular practice)

 RECOMMENDED:  YES  5 out of 5 stars