Could use clearer scaffolding – Sentence Ninja Review

I love that there are more advanced sentence structures and appropriate pictures for older students, which is why I was excited to buy it. However, I wish the color coding for words/phrases corresponded to the part of speech instead of to the word's place in the sentence. (For example, the first word is green and the second word is yellow, so a green word could be the subject of the sentence or just the article "The", which then means a yellow word could be a verb or noun, depending on the sentence! I don't know that that scaffolds meta-syntactic awareness very well.) For students with low frustration tolerance, the fact that the app rejects the entire sentence and kicks out all the words without leaving the ones that are in the right place intact is highly demotivating and has gotten some of my students to refuse to continue. Also, I've noticed that some of my students tend to try to drag sentence elements into the appropriate part of the sentence field (e.g. the capitalized word to he beginning, a prepositional phrase to the end) as they read each part, but the app doesn't let them do it successfully. I understand why it would make sense to require the user to assemble the sentence in correct sequence from the start, but try explaining that to my less flexible thinkers who are already struggling with syntax!
Review by tjSLP on Sentence Ninja.