Leapster: Story Explorers
© 2007 LeapFrog
When a Spanish-speaking family moves into the United States and the children don't speak English, a unique instructional problem occurs. You may have a very sharp child who can't read the textbooks or understand the teacher's spoken instructions, and this can lead to trouble. These children are often classified by schools as ELL (or English Language Learners). Leapster Story Explorers is designed for this situation, with software that mixes instructions in Spanish with early reading drill and application in English. It represents a new classroom application for the Leapster, a portable touch screen hardware device that was designed originally for home use. Children sign in by touching their name with the Leapster stylus. From that point, they can choose from twelve activities that deal with exploring vocabulary in both Spanish and English, phonemic awareness (sort items on an assembly line according to their sound) syntax (jump across logs to put words in order in a sentence) and comprehension (select a picture that best summarizes a sentence). All of the games use the stylus which keeps things engaging. For example, in the language enrichment segment of the program (called Ogre's house), children play an I Spy type of game where they touch common objects like beans, a spoon, rice, cheese; with printed labels, and spoken in both English and Spanish. Harder levels ask children to find one specific item among dozens. As they play, their time and progress are tracked in the background. Teachers can later go in and see how each student did by taking the cartridge and typing in the password. They can then track best scores, see the number of attempts as well as the time spent in each activity. Note that there is no way to print a report or send the scores to a computer; a bit of a pain. It is also possible for a teacher to set the pass threshold (from 0 to 100%), set the initial starting level, toggle the Spanish language support, or change the student's log in name. The entire experience uses a mastery learning model to let students progress at their own pace either in the classroom or at home. The base kit ranges from $90 to $1,050. One kit includes five Leapsters, five headphones, seven cartridges for 21 students (each cartridge tracks three students), 21 practice books, five AC adaptors, one power strip, and one teacher's manual or classroom guide. Grade-Level Kits for grades K, 1 or 2 are also available. All in all, this is a wonderful application of the Leapster hardware. Hopefully there will be future units in the other languages.
$1050, Leapster
Teaches: English language proficiency (for Spanish speakers), vocabulary, reading and listening skills, phonemic awareness
CTR Rating: 86%