children's software review

phonics 3b advanced level II: sports edition

Rating: 

Product Overview
We are pleased with the format of this educational software offering, and find the educational value high. In Phonics 3b: Advanced Level II: Sports Edition, children work through a series of interactive lessons, play games, and review concepts for each of the following subjects and categories: Literature, Writing, Grammar, Punctuation & Capitalization, Spelling Strategies, and Reading Comprehension Strategies. Another section is devoted to review games. The level of difficulty corresponds to third-grade curriculum.

Each topic mentioned above is associated with a particular sport. For example, the chapter on punctuation and capitalization is associated with—and likened to—the sport of Archery. Each topic is hosted by a different coach. Children are presented with lessons about the selected language arts topic. The lessons are probably exactly the right length for the attention spans of children in the target age group. They feature some level of interactivity to keep children interested and actively learning.

The lessons teach a variety of important language arts concepts and rules, and they play sports-themed games and participate in quizzes. Kids build paragraphs, paying attention to the topic and concluding sentences, for example. They determine whether sentences can be categorized as "fiction" or "non-fiction". Kids sort words into bins that are labeled "noun", "pronoun", "verb", and "adjective". 

One game in the Grammar 1 section involves answering questions about nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives in order to get a chance to hit a ball in a game of baseball. Testers thoroughly enjoyed this game.

Interesting comparisons are drawn between sports games and certain language arts topics and rules. For example, building a paragraph is likened to building a race car! These comparisons truly do work! The software can be enjoyed by all children in the target age group, but is perhaps best for sports fans.

Each topic features a section in which children learn words (pictured at right). The words on the screen are broken up into parts, and each part is sounded out when the mouse hovers over it. This part of the program is perhaps too lengthy, but mesmerizing as well. Kids were intrigued with the interactivity and the overlapping audio. 

We have a couple of complaints about the program. One involves errors—we spotted two. One involved the use of "red" in a sentence when it should have been "read". Another spelling error was particularly glaring, and was spotted when testers didn't make it over the bar in the pole-vaulting game. They were told, "You jumped to soon", where the word "to" should have been "too". This latter error was spotted by a kid tester. In a sense, it was an exercise in editing! However, it was not intended for this purpose. Errors such as these should be spotted before a program is published, especially when the program focuses on teaching children language arts subjects.

Although the design of the game is straightforward, we found it annoying that after clicking the "Menu" and "Progress" buttons, we could not resume the lesson from where we left off. Additionally, the medals that kids win do not always correspond with academic performance, so that, for example, if a child didn't get the timing right on the pole-vaulting game, but did very well in the grammar quizzes, he or she would earn a bronze medal. This is a minor issue, however, because kids can always re-try the game and get the timing right (and engage in more grammar practice in the process!).

The medal system is certainly improved from some of the early Help Me 2 Learn programs we reviewed. We had an issue with the medal system (Gold, Silver, and Bronze) being a little too strict. The system in Phonics 3b is happily not as strict. Other features that we found to be conducive to a healthy learning environment include the choice between playing a timed game or taking an un-timed quiz, and the ability to re-do games in order to improve a player's medal standing.

All in all, this is a strong program that teaches academic concepts in a creative and engaging manner. We stop short of a whole-hearted recommendation because of the issues outlined above, but still add the title to our best list with our reservations noted because it offers something unique, creative, and educational. Our testers learned quite a few things from the program, which makes it worthwhile.

Home, School, Lab and Network editions of the software are available. At the time of this writing, home editions of the software can be downloaded from the Help Me 2 Learn website for $19.95 US or ordered on CD-ROM for $24.95 US.

Technically Speaking
Minimum system requirements are Windows 95 or higher, including XP, Pentium 166.  Mac users require System 8.1 or higher, Mac OSX native or classic 8.1 & 9, PowerPC 120 MHz.