When I was teaching, I tried making portable word walls using file folders. This worked up to a point, but eventually the kids would run out of room. Having Word Wall on the iPad is a step in the right direction for better portability.
Punflay (love that name!) has packed a lot into this little app. In the ABC activity, the child chooses a letter, drags it down to the bottom of the screen, and hears the name of the letter and its sound. Then a picture appears using that letter in the initial position of the word, and the word is spoken.
The Writing Words activity focuses on twelve common word families. After choosing a combination, such as /am/, the child is prompted to drag and drop the letters to spell the word. The voice says each sound, and then blends the word, then asks the child to say the word. Next, the word is used in context in a sentence, with a picture above.
My Word Wall is the third main activity. Here, the child can tap the words they worked with and add them to a ‘word wall,’ organizing them by word family or letter of the alphabet. When the wall is finished, the child can tap the camera icon and save the wall to the iPad photo album.
The app also includes four games. See and Find is a concentration game, matching words and pictures. In Hide A Word, the child moves a little circle around the screen until it reveals a word, and then a picture illustrating that word appears. With Bubble Words, the child drags bubbles containing letters to fill in blanks to spell a word for the picture on the screen. This involves a bit of visual figure-ground discrimination, as several bubbles with letters float around and over each other. In the last game, Jigsaw Words, the child arranges the pieces of a puzzle to spell a word, which is then pronounced.
Word Wall HD has clear illustrations, good articulation of the sounds, and helpful auditory and visual prompts.
The children I work with enjoy this app, without realizing they are working on segmenting and blending sounds, as well as spelling and reading words and sentences.
Quibbles (and they really ARE just quibbles):
As I am not an app developer, I don’t know how feasible my suggestions are, but these are changes I’d like to see.
- In a future edition, I would like to see a way to save word walls for later manipulation, not just as photos. I would really like to be able to have a wall for each word family, and a wall for each letter or two. I would like to be able to re-arrange and add words. It would be great if there was a print function to print out the Word Wall that’s created.
- The main activities are labeled ‘Writing ABC’ and ‘Writing Words.’ However, it would be more accurate to label the first one something like ‘Saying ABCs’ and the second one ‘Spelling Words,’ as there isn’t a writing function involved.
- On the word wall screen, I’d like to know what ‘stickers’ means. Is it the individual letters? If so, I’d rather see the title “letters’ for that section. When I think of stickers, I think of reward stickers like butterflies, rainbows, puppies, and dragons, etc.
- I would really like to see an information page, explaining how to use the app to full advantage.
- It would also be great if it generated a report showing what the child had worked on.
You can get Word Wall HD for $.99 in the iTunes store. A great buy!
Barth Educational Consultants 