TenseBuilder
© 2012 Mobile Education Store
Designed for classroom settings for teaching tense forms (past, present or future), this app contains a set of 36 animated, sometimes funny cartoon-style videos that show a short sequence of events. You might see a bear sit on a turtle, or a woman approaching a man who is reading and calls him to dinner with a megaphone. After the video, you are given a short multiple-choice quiz that requires some thinking to answer. "Tap on the picture that shows what will happen in the future, but hasn't happened yet -- The woman will call the man to dinner." To correctly answer you must touch one of three boxes that shows a woman approaching a man with a megaphone. This is a complicated, abstract task, which is why younger children could be confused by this line of questioning. It requires replaying the vignette from memory, and correctly seeing the situation from different points in time. For older non-English speaking students this app may be worth noting. Each verb has a separate animated lesson to show past, present and future tense. Content includes 36 video lessons (the publisher plans to expand to 60 by December 2012), including the past tense of irregular verbs. Topics covered include how to sequence events and how to differentiate between events that will happen, events that are happening now, and events that have already happened. Other features include the option to record your own sentences "to improve receptive and expressive language skills" and the ability to save and email progress reports.
$14.99, iPad
Teaches: reading comprehension, ESL, language, parts of speech, verbs, nouns, tense, English
CTR Rating: 80%