You’re The Storyteller: The Surprise
A FABULOUS FUN APP FOR DEVELOPING LANGUAGE AND NARRATIVE SKILLS
I need to tell you about my favorite storytelling app. In this delightful animated story, a boy brings home a stray dog and attempts to hide it from his mother. Using body language, facial expressions, and carefully selected sound effects, my students love to watch the story unfold and find out why it is called “The Surprise!”
In this beautifully animated, wordless story, the child watches each scene and can then record and/or write his or her very own narration. THIS IS THE PRO VERSION, for the iPad. It holds up to 30 users’ narrations and writing. There are 8 chapters in this story. Each chapter’s animation clip runs an average of 15 seconds, allowing the child to describe and retell the story in small increments. The user may replay the entire narrated story from beginning to end via the Table of Contents. The user can also watch the original story with or without music accompaniment, email your story including the voice file, or print it out!
My clients enjoy the theme and the mystery behind the story. There are many ways to use this app. One can just describe one page at a time or the short video as it happens or after viewing it a few times. One can answer questions, make inferences and predictions and learn new words. The child can be a reader or a non-reader to enjoy this app. Writing can be encouraged as well.
I use it to practice articulation, fluency, grammatical usage and perspective-taking where we make inferences based on body language/facial expressions. There are “Challenge Words” provided for each chapter. These are optional and for more advanced language learners who want to try and put them into their narration.
Patti Hamaguchi, a Speech-Language Pathologist has developed other widely used apps such as Fun with Directions, More Fun with Directions and First Phrases and Fun with Verbs and Sentences. My clients love all these apps. Parents often get them as well for home practice.
My only complaint is that I wish Hamaguchi created more storylines so that we could enjoy other apps. Can’t wait to see more!!Check out the YouTube demo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyyzZxOt9BA.To find out more about this app and our other upcoming projects, visit www.hamaguchiapps.com