Let's Go Reading Island Adventure

Finally, a good reading program which incorporates both phonics and whole language and has just enough of both! For years I have searched in vain for good reading programs. Kid Phonics and Reader Rabbit's Interactive Reading Journey have been the only two I have wholeheartedly recommended, and both of those have certain weaknesses. This new program from Edmark is ground breaking and probably one of the best all around programs for young children released this year.

Your children will don a baseball cap equipped with a microphone for this island adventure. Roby the Raccoon has a dilemma. He really "needs" to learn how to read. Many children will relate to his great sense of urgency. Roby and his friend take off in a wonderful flying ship to explore Reading Island in order to help Roby learn how to read. Your children's adventures can be either guided or exploratory in nature depending on their mood and personality.

Once on the island, your children will learn each letter sound. At certain points in the action, your children will have to speak into their microphone. The computer registers their responses and plays their response back. While it does not respond exactly as a human would, your children do get to listen to their own voices and compare them to Roby's voice. My six year old could hardly wait until the next time he would get to talk into his hat. As each letter is learned there are corresponding activities and storybooks. The format is similar to Reader Rabbit's Interactive Reading Journey in that it progresses step by step and lets your children read stories as quickly as possible. You will find more phonics in this program however.

As the spaceship flies through the sky, your children will have to avoid clouds which contain sight words. The teaching of sight words does not dominate this program, but it is an important part of the process. Here the computer actually responds to what your children say. If they tell the ship to go 'up' it goes up. If the sight words are read correctly the cloud disappears allowing the ship to pass. The storybooks which are read do contain more whole language than phonics. Your children learn letters and as they listen to the storybook are learning words which start with that particular letter. If you are a phonics purist, and do not want any whole language at all, you will want to steer clear of this program and most other computer reading programs on the market. One thing which makes this program stand out is the voice input and voice recognition. Each page of the storybook is read aloud and then your children are given the chance to read the page and listen to their own voices. This gives children a great sense of accomplishment and provides them with some immediate success.

While still not a program for the phonics purist, this ground-breaking program will satisfy most parents in either the phonics or whole-language camp. The interaction between your children in the computer will keep them happily engaged for a long time. This is truly an innovative program and one which will open new avenues of possibility for computer learning.

Grading for Let's Go Read Island Adventure

Educational value- 5
Entertainment value- 5
Use of medium- 5
Age- 4-10 or any level needing beginning reading skills

You can find this program at http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/goreadpo.htm