The First Two R's
Software for the language arts
By Russell Smith
 When
I was an English teacher, I always worked on the premise that
students perfected their language arts skills through lots of
practice. In the years B.C. (Before Computer), writing assignments
and grammar practice entailed plenty of hand- written work, numerous
draft versions, and copious notecards and reference lists. These
techniques are by no means obsolete now, but some are beginning
to be replaced by computer applications.
Powerful word processing software has enabled students to revise
their drafts much more easily than they could with typing or handwriting.
Integrated with spell checkers, grammar checkers, and Internet
research, word processing has become the standard tool for writing
assignments. Research studies confirm that students become better
writers with daily access to modern computers and modern word
processing software.
Meanwhile, another revolution in educational software has been
unfolding: Sophisticated programs are being released to help younger
students learn basic language arts skills and become proficient
writers. Some of the earlier programs were stand-alone versions,
while others were part of expensive Integrated Learning Systems.
ILS modules provide extensive content and comprehensive student
tracking, but teachers often criticize them for their lack of
creativity. Many ILS workstations are "dumb terminals" with no
hard drives, relying on the fileserver machine for software. The
systems also require expensive yearly software updates to help
prevent the monotonous drill-and-kill syndrome.
As labs and individual classrooms begin to receive more and
more stand-alone classroom machines with modern multimedia capabilities,
the pendulum is swinging away from ILS labs. CD versions of software
for networked and stand-alone machines are becoming the most requested
tools for teachers in all subject areas. And vendors have responded
with thousands of new CD titles that are aligned with national
and state curriculum objectives.
Interestingly enough, there is now a hybrid ILS system on the
market from Knowledge
Adventure called Classworks
Gold. This comprehensive system extends ILS tracking into
the realm of state databases. Classworks can import student test
data, pinpoint the state test objectives each student needs to
work on, and bring up appropriate modules from 150 of the most
popular CD-ROM programs available today. By skipping the splash
screens and introductory segments found in most CD software and
going directly to what the student needs, Classworks Gold ushers
in a new generation of instructional software package deals. School
districts with networked elementary schools should arrange for
a preview to see if this system fits their needs.
Elementary titles
 Reader
Rabbit's Reading
The Learning Company.
(800) 852-2255. Ages 6-9. If you wondered what happened to the
very successful Reader Rabbit's Interactive Reading Journey for
Grades 1-2 (Power User, September 1997), then wonder no more:
This is IRJ renamed. The 30 different interactive stories help
kids reinforce and practice reading and vocabulary skills. These
entertaining stories help kids develop a love of reading during
their formative years.
Reader Rabbit's Reading has 100 reading lessons and plenty of
fun-filled games like Silly Syllables, Rhyme Time, and Sound Sorter.
The progressively challenging stories track students' progress,
and teachers can set proficiency levels for individual students
so that less-experienced readers can complete the entire series
in the story line. If your computers are equipped with microphones,
students can speak the words and sentences aloud and play them
back to compare with the narrator.
CornerStone
Language Arts
The Learning Company.
(800) 852-2255. Ages 8-10. This excellent self-paced software
is designed to help teach basic grammar skills in capitalization
and spelling. The entire CornerStone line consists of comprehensive
products for students in grades three through eight that address
basic language arts and mathematics skills. Quite a cut above
the typical boring drill-and-kill software, the CornerStone line
has been correlated with all the popular national standardized
tests. Teachers and administrators will like the customized reports
they can get from the software to see how learning is progressing
for each student.
CornerStone provides differentiated instruction through five
steps: pretest instruction, warm-up activities, quiz sections,
relaxation exercises, and follow-up activities. If you want something
that looks and behaves like a good textbook but is on computer,
then look no further than the CornerStone software.
 Jumpstart
Reading for Second Graders
Knowledge Adventure.
(800) 545-7677. Ages 6-8. This new title from the hugely successful
Jumpstart series continues the challenging and enjoyable format
common to all Jumpstart CDs. Students build critical reading skills
in nine exciting activities. In the Machu Picchu activity, for
example, kids pick compound words to jump across a chasm. In Amazing
Parts of Speech, they navigate a maze using nouns, adjectives,
and adverbs. Concepts covered include word classification, spelling,
parts of speech, verb tense, contractions, spelling, and reading
comprehension. One nice feature is an option to print out the
CD's workbook to use as paper worksheets. The level of difficulty
can be adjusted to give students a workout in their thinking skills.
Kid Works Deluxe Month by Month
Knowledge Adventure.
(800) 545-7677. Ages 6-8. This add-on template CD works with Kid
Works Deluxe, which must be purchased separately. As the name
suggests, the template is designed to provide additional graphics
and story templates for each month of the year. The Teachers Edition
has two identical template CDs and comes with a huge ring binder
full of lesson plans, important historical and cultural facts
about each month, and recipes for foods related to that month.
The disk shuffling takes a little practice, but die-hard Kid Works
fans will love these add-ons.
 Storybook
Weaver Deluxe
The Learning Company.
(800) 852-2255. Ages 6-12. This update of a golden oldie includes
such new features as the ability to record sounds and an updated
library of graphics. It boasts a bilingual writing program, so
students can write in English or Spanish. It includes thousands
of contemporary and folklore images to help students illustrate
their books. Text-to-speech modules let students create impressive
multimedia presentations. Young students can use this as a training
program for the more sophisticated multimedia programs they will
use in high school. Storybook Weaver will keep them engaged for
hours in creative activities.
Letter
Sounds and Vowels:
Short and Long
Sunburst Communications.
(800) 321-7511. Ages 5-7. These two new programs are from the
Tenth Planet series
on literacy. I am as impressed by these language arts CDs as I
was by the company's math CDs. Pupils create their own word bank
of words they work on in the multimedia modules and then use those
words in other modules. Building their own list of words helps
reinforce critical vocabulary skills. Text-to-speech and voice
recording options make these very sophisticated English software
programs, yet the interface is clean and easily navigated.
The CDs come with the standard issue Sunburst ring binder full
of helpful lessons, blackline masters, and program instructions.
These programs would be perfect for an elementary school iMac
lab. Windows users may need a little more help getting the video
settings correct, but the instructions are simple to understand,
and the programs run equally well on both platforms.
Reading Success for Kids
FTC Publishing Group.
(888) 237-6740. Ages 5-10. Developer Jeff Patterson has created
some nice reading CDs (Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Jack & The
Beanstalk) that help young students with reading comprehension
and sentence-building skills. The programs feature easy-to-read
text, charming songs, interactive educational games, and a teacher's
resource ring binder with blackline masters. The Dallas Independent
School District recently picked this series for its third-grade
curriculum.
Secondary titles
Write
On! Plus
Sunburst Communications.
(800) 321-7511. Ages 10-15. Produced by Humanities Software and
distributed by Sunburst, this program integrates the power of
the student's word processor with language arts templates. The
program's interface could stand some improving, as it is slightly
daunting to a nontechnical user. But once you get past the cosmetic
warts and get the program up and running, you'll find a lot of
decent content.
Students have access to 118 activity files based on such popular
children's books as Island of the Blue Dolphin, Charlotte's
Web, If I Were in Charge of the World, Ira Sleeps Over, and
Sarah, Plain and Tall. The templates lead students through
lesson suggestions for each of the titles. For example, students
are asked to make predictions about a book before reading it on
the basis of examining the dust jacket. A later template asks
them to analyze and compare their predictions with what actually
happened in the book. For teachers who are teaching these books,
this program will be a helpful tool. It comes with the standard
Sunburst ring binder with excellent blackline masters and teaching
suggestions.
 Grammar
for the Real World
Knowledge Adventure.
(800) 545-7677. Ages 10-18. This program continues the string
of Real World hits (Math, English, and French for the Real World)
in which students practice grammar skills in a real-world format.
Several neat games reward kids who complete them successfully,
and a final reward allows students to create a multimedia cartoon
movie similar to Storybook Weaver. Students will want to use and
reuse this highly creative software because it is visually appealing
and easy to learn.
Crystal
Composition
NetRich Curriculum. (888)
605-7292. Ages 10-18. English teachers will welcome Crystal Composition
because of its 15 superlative writing topics correlated to well-known
web sites, such as the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.
Other sites are rarer finds that teachers and students will be
glad to add to their bookmarks. The program comes with a spiral
notebook Teacher's Guide, which fully explains how to use the
writing topics. Each topic has four activities and suggested timelines
for use, ranging from one to 25 class periods. Topic themes include:
writer's block; story starters; the same and opposite (about heteronyms
and antonyms); exploring authors and illustrators; and the Civil
War gazette.
Crystal Composition is promoted for use online or offline, but
in my opinion, you really need an active modem or direct Internet
connection to use the CD properly. Site licenses are quite reasonable.
Buy a single copy to see if your language arts teachers like it,
and then decide if it would be worthwhile for a lab or site license.
Middle
School Language Arts
Sofsource, a division
of The Learning Company. (319) 247-3333. Ages 10-15. This Windows-only,
six-CD set has some excellent activities for fourth- through eighth-graders.
The fourth-grade disk has 28 reading selections on dinosaurs and
other activities involving spelling, remembering detail, and separating
fact from fiction. The fifth-grade disk has 28 reading selections
on Ancient Greece and Rome; activities include spelling, main
idea, metaphors and simile, and dialogue.
Disks for sixth, seventh, and eighth grades focus on airplanes
and flight, U.S. presidents, and computers. Language arts skills
covered include persuasive techniques, inferences and drawing
conclusions, and discerning the author's purpose. A sixth CD,
called Latin for English, has information and activities on 1,200
Latin words and 400 sentences designed to enhance the understanding
of English. A soft-cover book on the life of the famous cartoonist
Thomas Nast is also included in the package as a bonus teaching
tool.
The
Writing Trek, Grades 6-8, Volume 1
Sunburst Communications.
(800) 321-7511. Ages 10-15. This academic language-learning series
was developed by ED-Vantage Software and distributed by Sunburst
Communications. CDs are currently available for grades four through
six, six through eight, and eight through 10; plans call for creating
programs for all grades K-12. The Writing Trek series is inspired
by the curriculum of educator and author James Moffett, whose
numerous books and teaching methods influence language arts classrooms
around the world.
I reviewed the CD program for the middle school language arts
classroom. The carefully chosen and extremely well-done QuickTime
movie segments, plus the clean-cut, easy-to-navigate interface,
result in an innovative writing program that teachers will love
to have in the classroom.
Writing Trek offers help across the entire writing process,
using such tools as an almanac of useful writer's information,
a full-featured lexicon reference, and a thesaurus for finding
just the right word. Training modules give careful instruction
in the important elements of good writing, sentence and paragraph
structure, and story-development tips. There is also a web
site where more resources are available for users. Teachers
will need to spend a weekend becoming aware of all the powerful
elements in this program before they can supervise their students
well. I think this is a must-buy program for progressive middle
school language arts classrooms.
 Ultimate
Word Attack
Knowledge Adventure.
(800) 545-7677. Ages 10-18. Like Spelling Blaster (reviewed in
January), this CD is chock full of vocabulary activities. Students
learn more than 4,000 words in multimedia modules. It has a special
Test Prep vocabulary list to help students prepare for college
entrance exams, plus 25 special category word lists.
Teachers (or students) can input their own word lists in the
custom editor, using different languages if desired. They can
also print out flash cards, crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles,
and sentence completion tests to use away from the computer. A
bonus audio CD helps kids master more than 250 challenging words.
Your students will have lots of fun with this CD, and the learning
activities are comprehensive and worthwhile for the English classroom.
On the horizon
Looking ahead, I venture that the real growth period for innovative
software will be next year, when DVD software finally begins to
enter the classroom as a mainstream technology. About 300,000
DVD players were sold worldwide in 1998, and 3 million are projected
to be sold this year. That far surpasses the initial growth rate
for either CD audio players or CD-ROM drives for computers. Admittedly
many of those new DVD players will be stand-alone movie players
for home television use, but by January 2000, the computer industry
should be pumping out DVD drives in virtually every new machine.
When the software developers begin to take advantage of the
huge storage capacity of DVD and couple it with the high-bandwidth
Internet (DSL, cable modems, and direct connections), schools
will have an awesome arsenal of information technology tools to
help teach the students of the 21st century.
Russell
Smith is a contributing editor for
Electronic School and an educational technology consultant for
Region 14 Education Service Center.
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