Reading Comprehension Stories: Introducing, Word Retrieval App!!

Virtual Speech Center has just released their newest app, Word Retrieval! This company has been on a major roll on pushing out these amazing apps targeting common skills that can be difficult or unmotivating to address! I was honored when they contacted me to provide me with an opportunity to review it! Remember, the thoughts and opinions are all mine! Let's take a look!

This app was designed to be used with those individuals with:
- Aphasia
- Specific language disorder
- Learning disorders
- Cognitive deficits leading to word finding difficulties
- Autism
- Central Auditory Processing Disorder

To set up, just click settings to decide how the tasks will be presented and how many tasks for switching amongst students.

Then all you have to do is add student names and decide which activity.

There are two different activity types: flashcards and word-challenge game. Each activity addresses the various word retrieval strategies:
(Each activity offers 80 trials, organized into four sets):
- Name this Picture - Sentence Completion (e.g. I eat soup with a…)
- Opposite Meanings (e.g. What’s the opposite of the word “open”?)
- Convergent Naming (This is an animal that has fur and four legs and is used to catch mice.)
- Divergent Naming (Name five musical instruments.)
- Associations (What things go with a house?)
- Definitions (Define the word “lake.”)

Take a look below at some examples of all the above in the flashcard activity setting:

In this activity, students are presented with a prompt and must verbally respond. They can record and play back for self analysis. They can score themselves or you can score them based on their responses. This is great for self-correct and learning from mistakes.

At any time, you can click "finish" to end the activity and be brought to a results page:

Once students are mastering the flashcard approach to practicing the strategies, they can play the motivating game that looks like Jeopardy. Each student gets their own boards based on the strategies selected by you ahead of time.

Students click the various point values. This has nothing to do with the data collected for your purpose but motivating for the students! Once they click a point value, they can be presented with a task similar to the flashcard setting. They can verbally respond, record and replay their responses. They can then again rate themselves. I had it set so they can correct their responses if incorrect to help maintain confidence and learn from mistakes.

Note, for both activities, students will have to go through the entire strategy set of 20 to go to the next one. So be prepared in a session to just use/work on one strategy at a time.

At any point, you can click finish to be brought to the data page. These results can be emailed and will be saved on the app for later use.