Welcome to Syntax City! As the mayor of this great city, it is only fair of me to warn you: We take our syntax very seriously around here. Back when
Welcome to Syntax City!
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As the mayor of this great city, it is only fair of me to warn you: We take our syntax very seriously around here. Back when our city was founded, we wanted to create a utopia where all verbs would agree with their subjects, all actions would be spoken with the right tense, and all people lived peacefully with the proper pronouns.
Syntax City is a state-of-the-art application designed by Barbara Fernandes, M.S; CCCSLP, that targets a variety of grammatical elements in fun and engaging ways for elementary and middle school children. The theme sets the tone for children visiting a variety of places within the city. Each location within the city targets a different set of goals:
Was / Were – Bakery – 3 levels of difficulty – 52 questions
Do / Does – Gym – 3 levels of difficulty – 50 questions
Is / Are – Park – 1 level of difficulty – 50 questions
Irregular Past Tense – Farm – 2 levels of difficulty – 59 questions
He/ She – Ski Resort – 2 levels of difficulty – 50 questions
Has/ Have – Grocery – 1 level of difficulty – 51 questions
Simply drag each player on the bottom to each location that you want the player to work on. You will see that player’s profile on top of the location which indicates it is selected.
You can zoom in on the map by using two fingers and spreading them apart. When zoomed in you can see different areas of the map by sliding your finger in the direction that you wish to see. Making a pinching motion with both fingers zooms the out on the map.
Players can work on as few as one or as many as all of the locations on any given game making for an almost endless combination of possibilities! Press the forward arrow button in the top left after you have finished selecting at least one location for each student.
Students benefit from a variety of cues on Sintax City to help them identify the correct answer. Visual cues are part of understanding conversation on a daily basis. The University of Alabama cites the following:
“Clear pictures multiply the students’ level of understanding of the material presented, and they should be used to reinforce your message, clarify points, and create excitement.” University of Alabama School of Medicine, 2005
Smarty Ears has made sure that each question on all the levels of Sintax City include high quality diverse images.
Record and Playback Responses
After correctly answering the question, a player has the opportunity to record and playback the response. This helps players develop an ear for what correct syntax sounds like.
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Select the record button on the bottom to begin recording.
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During the recording, a stop button replaces the record button. Press the stop button to end the recording.
After selecting a correct answer, players receive positive feedback through a small animation in addition to speaking the correct response.
Additionally, each correct answer on the first attempt earns a gold coin. 10 gold coins unlock a treasure. This coin system helps students visually track their success.
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Motivating Rewards
(a total of 127 Treasures)
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Students can unlock treasures that relate to the the theme of the location they are working on. Each location has 13-20 trophies to unlock with a total of 127 in the entire app.
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Each student has a trophy case where they can view
all of the treasures that they have earned. The “share” button allows you to email or print the treasures that the player has unlocked.
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Motivating Rewards
Give an extra emphasis to reading skills by turning off the “play audio”.
or
Provide additional scaffolding to the strug ling reader by turning on the “play audio”.
Help guide the student on their second attempt by eliminating an incorrect answer choice.
or
Create a game show like atmosphere with a buzzing sound for incorrect answers.
Have the player automatically attempt recording and listening back to his correct responses to develop an ear for syntax.
or
Turn the voice recording prompt off to focus only on written syntax.
As with all Smarty Ears apps, Syntax City offers detailed and visual data collection. A set of graphs provides immediate visual feedback on the student’s skill level attained and progress towards mastery of their goal. The data can be emailed, printed, or shared to other compatible applications such as iBooks or Pages.
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TRC Compatible
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Therapy Report Center aka “TRC” is a free app
If you enter your players into TRC you can export them to Sintax City (and almost all other Smarty Ears apps) saving you time.
Additionally, you can export results from Sintax City (and other Smarty Ears apps) into TRC to quickly build a comprehensive progress report.
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Video Tutorial
Features:
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• Over 400 target questions
• 8 different activities / goals each with their own location
• Multiplayer capabilities — use as sigle player or up to 5 players per a game
• Players can work on multiple goals within the same game
• Quick Play option— allows you to quickly start a game without creating a player
• Tracks data for each student — automatically calculates results
• Detailed Reports— a color-coded graph for overall performance and a
detailed breakdown based off of each type of question within a session
• Email, print, or export results
• Therapy Report Center compatible
• 127 Treasures that can be unlocked — a great motivation for many students to keep practicing their syntax skills
• Fun Animations— each location has a character that does a small animation
after each attempted question
“If there is one thing that many speech-language pathologists may agree almost unanimously, it is how difficult it is to teach syntax to our kid clients. Smarty Ears makes the learning of grammar rules more fun and infinitely more colorful with their latest release: Syntax City.” http://ispeakapp.com/tag/syntax-city/
Speech therapists and teachers will be thrilled with Smarty Ears newest app, Syntax City. Learning the English rules of plurals, irregular verbs and verb agreement will no longer be boring. Swing through the town, visiting the ski resort, grocery store, zoo, beach, farm, or other locations for targeted interventions. http://teacherswithapps.com/syntax-city-slps-and-teachers-will-be-thrilledwith-smarty-ears-newest-app/
If your child has difficulty with word order, plurals, subject verb agreement, and verb tense, we recommend Syntax City! It was a finalist for Best Elementary Student app award. It has different parts of a town that focus on specific skills: gym (do/does), beach (third person singular agreement), bakery (was/were), ski resort (he/she), farm (past tense verb agreement), grocery (has/have), park (is/are), and zoo (regular and irregular plurals). We find the animations to be highly motivating for the children we work with! http://www.bigcitymoms.com/articles/picks/favorite-apps/top-speech-andlanguage-apps-for-school-aged-children.html
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