Exploring Nouns Sterling Edition
© 2008 Laureate Learning Systems
Designed to teach and reinforce vocabulary in English to children with special needs, this program uses full screen scenes to train 120 early developing nouns, by way of 10 nicely illustrated scenes, such as a barnyard, restaurant or jungle. Like prior Laureate programs, the content is extremely customizable. Teachers can quickly toggle on/off which items are illustrated and work with a set of just one or two words. Once a scene is launched, children are asked to find a particular item, with direct instructions such as, “This is a horse. Find the horse.” A child must click the horse to get the problem correct. Later, a child might be asked to identify the nouns associated with a simple statement such as, “The girl is singing.” There are two types of reinforcements for correct answers: either the noun animates or characters perform a short skit using enriched language. The skits and animated graphics are well done, and the graphics are clear and well illustrated. In other words, a spoon looks like a spoon, and there's no additional visual clutter. There are eight types of activities, as follows. Optimized Intervention tracks student responses and guides the user through the curriculum; Exploration is an open-ended activity that lets students select an item on the screen, hear the word, and see the associated text and animation; Identification lets students identify nouns from selected scenes; Mixed Explore/Identify alternates between the Exploration and Identification activities; and Testing is used to document pre- or post-training performance. There are also three supplemental activities. Word Introduction (Cards) presents a single word and it's associated animation, Word Introduction (Scene) introduces vocabulary items one at a time until a full scene is displayed, and Animated Routines. It is based on behavioral theory; with a lot of direct instruction and training (another approach might be to let the child visit a real farmyard). When used in conjunction with real experiences, this type of software works best. Management features include the ability to keep detailed records (recorded for each student), and switch between scanning or direct select input. Prices are $225 each for one to four copies, $157.50 each for five to nine copies, $135 each for 10-19 copies, $112.50 for 20-49 copies, and $1125 for a Network License. Note: See also Exploring Verbs.
$225, Windows, Mac OSX
Teaches: language arts for special needs, reading, grammar, phonics
CTR Rating: 88%