The Minimal Pairs Academy (MPA) is a state of the art evidence-based minimal pairs app for speech-language pathologists and parents of children with phonologic sound disorders. Use Minimal Pairs Academy
About Minimal Pairs Academy
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The Minimal Pairs Academy (MPA) is a state of the art evidence-based minimal pairs app for speech-language athologists and parents of children with phonologic sound disorders. Use Minimal Pairs Academy to help your student or child develop listening and discrimination skills and have fun practicing producing target words at the word and phrase level. Minimal Pairs Academy uses linguistically based treatment procedures that have been reported in the literature to be effective when treating children with multiple sound disorders. (Saben & Ingham, 1991)
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Children with several sound errors may not necessarily have problems producing their error sounds correctly; but they may have problems using the sounds contrastively as phonemes, which leads to the production of homophones. These “errors” are also known as phonological processes. Phonological processes are the patterns that children use to simplify adult speech.
The conventional minimal pair model of treatment is pairing a sound that is produced in error by a child with its corresponding substitute, which has been reported clinically effective (Barlow and Gierut, 2002).
Creating players on Minimal Pairs Academy is fast and straightforward. From the main menu select “Add New player” on the right. (Alternatively you can select “New” from the top left of the player menu). A new window will appear.
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Type in a student name in the “Name” box, select a date of birth (start with the year), and a grade; then tap on the area with the camera area to select either a photo (from your photo library), an avatar (from over 100 built in fun character illustrations), or nothing as a visual representation of the student. Press “done” in the bottom left corner to proceed to the next step. A new menu will appear.
On Minimal Pairs Academy the targets and activities are saved to the students’ profiles in order to save time.
Select one or more of the targets from the buttons that resemble sheets of paper, a green “selected ” stamp will appear to indicate your selections.
Then select one or more activities from the grey colored buttons along the bottom. The buttons will change from grey to blue to indicate your selections.
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When you are finished press the “done” button in the bottom right corner. Your player is saved and you will be brought to the player menu.
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Alternatively, if you are using the free app “Therapy Report Center” aka TRC you can import players by selecting the “import from TRC” button in the top center. You will still need to select the players targets and goals, but it will still save you time from having to enter the players’ names, date of births and photos. TRC is a great time saving tool as if you enter the players in that app you are able to export them to almost all Smarty Ears apps.
[Tap here to download your FREE copy of the Therapy Report Center on iTunes]
!From the main menu, tap on he “Enter Minimal Pairs Academy” door. This will bring you to the players menu. Then double tap on the picture of the student that you wish to edit.
This will bring up the basic player info. To delete the player select delete in the top right corner. ! !Also from this screen you can edit any of the players info by typing in the selecting the boxes you wish to change and typing in new info.! !Pressing “done” in the bottom left saves any changes that were made and brings you to the screen where you can edit the player’s goals.
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Tapping once on a “selected” target changes the stamp from “selected” to “mastered” this is useful for keeping track of which skills a particular player has mastered. Tapping twice on the “selected” stamp deselects that particular target. Make any necessary changes by selecting/deselecting the targets on the top and the activities along the bottom of the screen. Press “done” in the bottom right corner to save the changes.
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Settings
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Minimal pairs Academy offers great flexibility within the settings in order to better serve each individual players needs. The settings can be accessed both from the main menu by selecting the “settings” button on the top right, or mid game by pressing the “settings” button that is also located in the top right.
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This menu allows you to select whether or not to show the written “display the word” during the production activity, and on the auditory bombardment activity whether or not to “display the written word on cards” or to “display the written target”. Additionally you can edit the exercises by selecting the orange “edit exercises” button on the bottom.
This will bring up a new menu that allows you to deselect any individual exercises that you may find too difficult for your particular player. Please note you must keep at least 9 exercises on each target as this is necessary for each activity.
From the main menu select the “enter Minimal Pairs Academy” door. This will bring you to the players’ menu. Select anywhere be tween 1 and 4 players by touching their pictures. A “selected” stamp will appear on each of the players that you select. After selecting the player(s) press the “done” button in the bottom right corner. The game will begin.
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Gameplay
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The players are lined up vertically on the left. The players are lined up with the top player being the one whose turn it currently is and each player below having to wait for the players above before it is their turn. Pressing the grey arrow on the right progresses to the next question and the next player (the players pictures will rotate upwards). The record button in the top left allows the player to record and playback their voice practicing the target. The “settings” button on the top right allows the user to adjust the settings in the middle of gameplay. The “notes” button on the bottom right allows the user to type in notes about the session that can later be reviewed within the saved session data. When you are finished with the game press the “done” button in the top right corner.
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The app will move the students as they have their turn. The app follows the Cycles Approach which is an Evidence Based Practice ( those three little words we love ) approach to articulation and phonological remediation. This means that if you select, say three processes for your student to work on, those will be cycled with each session. On Monday the student will work on process 1, Tuesday the student will work on process 2, and so on.” The Speech Bubble.
On auditory bombardment an audio model of the targeted word i s automatically played. In the example the target is “cage”. (Although the word is not visually displayed you can have it displayed by selecting the “settings” button on the top right). The player is to pick which of the images corresponds with the audio. If the player elects incorrectly a the an audio beep is heard and the targeted word is repeated to give the player another chance.
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!When the correct answer is selected the corresponding card is turned face down and a new audio target is played. In the example “cage” is now face down and the player is verbally asked to find “couch”. This continues until the student correctly identifies each target. The facilitator can progress to the next item at any time by pressing the grey arrow on the right.
The student is given a target word (which is automatically played) in the top center above the two cards. The student is to pick which card correctly corresponds with the audio target. The target can be repeated by touching the word. Likewise the player can listen to each word (without making a selection) by touching the speaker buttons below each word. When the player is ready to make a selection they will touch the actual card with the corresponding image.
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If the player makes an incorrect selection, a “try again” message displays and the app repeats the audio that corresponds with the image selected; this gives the player another opportunity to try again. When the correct answer is chosen the reinforcement is the correct corresponding audio. The clinician decides when to move to the next item by pressing the grey arrow button on the right.
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[one_half][/one_half][one_half_last padding=”0px 0px 0 40px”]Activity 3: Production
On the production activity the player is presented with
two cards, a large one facing up that has the target word and a smaller card facing down that has the corresponding minimal pair. The player is required to attempt to say the target word while the facilitator (the SLP, teacher, or parent) scores the students effort using the three tracking buttons on the bottom (green for “correct”, yellow for “almost”, and red for “incorrect”). If the player gets the target word correct on the first attempt, there is no need to present the minimal pair and the facilitator can can continue to the next target by pressing the grey arrow on the right.
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However, if the player is struggling with the target it may be useful to present the minimal pair by tapping on the smaller card. The player can then tap on each card to hear an audio example which may help the player with auditory discrimination between the two words and hopefully lead to better attempts at production. The tracking permits the facilitator to mark multiple attempts on the same target and will only progress to the next target after pressing the grey arrow on the right.
On the phrase completion activity the player is presented with a phrase in which they must select the correct choice from within the minimal pair that is presented. the player can listen to each word (without making a selection) by touching the speaker buttons below each word. When the player is ready to make a selection they will touch the actual card with the corresponding image. Selecting either choice will place the selected choice into the phrase.
If the player makes an incorrect selection, a “try again” message displays and the app repeats the audio that corresponds with the image selected; this gives the player another opportunity to try again.
When the correct answer is chosen the reinforcement is the correct corresponding audio. The facilitator decides when to move to the next item by pressing the grey arrow button on the right.
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Results
[one_half padding=”40px 40px 0 0px”] Minimal Pairs provides a state of the art data collection system
After finishing a game a player is automatically taken to the “report cards” menu. This area can also be accessed from the main menu by selecting the door labeled “report cards”. From the report cards menu, tap on the player of whom you wish to review the results.
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The data tracking capabilities of MPA set a new standard for speech therapy applications. The results offer three modes that can be accessed by the tabs on the left:
Additionally, as players master the processes targeted, they receive a “mastered” stamp that can be use to track progress over time.
By selecting “share” in the top right corner, results can be shared via e-mail or printed directly from the iPad (provided user has a air-printing ready printer), or exported into Therapy Report Center (TRC). Therapy Report Center is a great free app for creating progress reports from accumulating the data from all of your Smarty Ears apps.
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Reviews
From Miss Speechie, SLP http://speechtimefun.blogspot.com/2013/01/introducing-minimalpairs-academy-app.html
[one_half padding=”0px 15px 0 0px”] Things I like about this app:
• TONS of phonological processes included
• Ability for audio/visual presentation
• Receptive and expressive activities
• Data collection and progress monitoring
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• Easy to use and navigate
• Cute graphics and animations
• Individualized for needs of students
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Great Listening App by Brigch
Minimal Pairs Academy is not just an app for speech. It is a great app to use with students with hearing loss. They often struggle to differentiate sounds in conversation and this app provides some nice practice for them both with individual words and also with words in context.
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SLP that loves this app by Kathleen Mays
My students and I love and enjoy this app! I appreciate that I can work with a group and the different choice for data collection plus the ability to email it are time saving and efficient.
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Wonderful ! by Wagnerslp
I love this app for working with my students on minimal pairs. Graphics are
wonderful, ease of use..and best of all my students have been engaged and
making progress! I give this a five star rating!!!
The Minimal Pairs Academy (MPA) is a state of the art evidence-based minimal pairs app for speech-language athologists and parents of children with phonologic sound disorders. Use Minimal Pairs Academy to help your student or child develop listening and discrimination skills and have fun practicing producing target words at the word and phrase level. Minimal Pairs Academy uses linguistically based treatment procedures that have been reported in the literature to be effective when treating children with multiple sound disorders. (Saben & Ingham, 1991)
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[/one_half][one_half_last padding=”20px 0px 0 50px”]Activity 1: Auditory Bombardment
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[/one_half][one_half_last padding=”0px 0px 0 40px”]Activity 3: Production
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[/one_half][one_half_last padding=”0px 0px 0 20px”]Activity 4: Phrase Completion
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