Announcing Go-Togethers

Developing students’ semantic abilities is one of my favorite parts of my job! Words, and the connections between them, are just really fun. Building semantic networks gives students a stronger vocabulary base, which in turn gives them points of reference as they learn new words.

Enter Go-Togethers, an app I helped design with Rosie Simms for Smarty Ears. Go-Togethers targets identifying word associations as well as expressive naming. When we designed it, we wanted responses that take advantage of the touch screen. So, although a simple tap also works for students with fine motor difficulties, students make receptive connections by tapping and dragging, which builds a semantic word map for each target.

Each screen gives you time to talk about the associations with students, targeting reasons such as “Yes, a cow goes with milk because milk comes from a cow!”

The expressive level lets you (or the student) tap and tally associated items (for example, “a cake!”) and, optionally, the reason (“because you need eggs to make a cake!”) for open-ended language practice.

Consider Go-Togethers a go-to intervention for students with word retrieval difficulties (especially for its data tracking) and for students who struggle with word classes or word associations on language tests. With 200 target items in 20 categories across two levels of difficulty, it gives SLPs, educators and parents a lot of content to work with.