Rainbow Sentences

$7.99, iPad

Teaches: reading, grammar, sentence structure, parts of speech

CTR Rating: 80%

CTR Review

While the interface is less than elegant and the hand drawn sketches are sometimes less than professional, Rainbow Sentences succeeds in giving children learning to read the chance to construct sentences, by thinking of them in terms of their grammatical construction. The who, what, where, and why parts of sentences are color coded, and must be dragged and dropped into place in order to work. Because children can use the color coding as a crutch, the experience works for introducing parts of speech and grammar. We also liked the way a child can record their own reading of the sentences, save the recordings, and play them back. Detailed records are kept. Content includes 168 images; each representing a paragraph to build, and detailed teacher options that let you turn on/off the level of support, adjust the level and toggle the voice recording on/off. Teachers will love these features if they are using this app in a one-on-one context. Each set of puzzles earns a puzzle piece, and individual student records can be saved. Weaknesses include less-than-professional illustrations and a non-standardized interface, with too many steps between problems. All in all, this is a clunky, but handy tool for reading teachers.