ABC World

Reading Readiness Skills For Grades Pre K - 2

Students visit an undersea world to work on preschool and early reading skills. Friendly sea animals like Toby, Betsi, and Theodore (at left) help children by giving directions and guiding beginning readers to success.

There are six letter recognition activities in ABC World. Two or more activities can be used simultaneously, and letters to be included in the activities can be restricted. Students can be given practice matching upper case letters, matching lower case letter, or matching upper case to lower case letters. They can practice identifying spoken upper case letters or spoken lower case letters. And, they can practice associating letters with beginning sounds. Specific items missed are noted by the record keeping system.

ABC World includes three word recognition activities. The first uses Dolch sight words. They have been divided into eleven lists. One or more of these can be selected for use, or a custom list can be created for students with special needs. Kit pronounces the words and gives help as necessary. Ollie the Octopus keeps track of progress. When students are doing well, a shark or turtle swims by. The second activity provides students practice identifying rhyming words. There are two lists from which words can be drawn The third activity focuses on identifying opposites. Again, there is a beginning and a slightly more advanced word list from which problems can be drawn. Specific items missed are noted by the record keeping.

The final activity in ABC World is picture sequencing. Rosette, a friendly crab, helps students work through the exercises. Three or five picture sets can be selected to place in proper order. Picture sets outside a student's background can be deselected. Jewels appear in the treasure chest as children succeed in placing the pictures in their proper order. Picture sets which cause problems are noted.

The primary motivation for students in ABC World is the friendliness of the characters who help students along as they work. Teachers like the fact that students enjoy using this program, but, they also really appreciate the detailed record keeping which this program can do, whether in a network environment or on individual stand-alone machines. At this early stage of reading development, it is enormously productive to pinpoint and then eliminate specific occurrences of student confusion, one by one. Above is an example of the kind of detail this program can capture. It shows the specific items that Tracy Johnson missed and the number of times they were missed.

ABC World includes Micrograms' latest Class File record keeping system. This system collects student performance data from around the network and consolidates it into one report. The report may be for the latest work session, the last five work sessions, or a cumulative report of all work done. The report may be for a single student or for the entire class. On a stand-alone machine, the same kind of record keeping can be done; but, of course, students must take turns using the program, rather than using it simultaneously, as they do on a network. This system also allows teachers to adjust program activities for students individually or to change options for the entire class at once. In the network environment, the Teacher Module in ABC World provides our most advanced network security and convenience features, many of which can be used in the stand-alone environment as well.

"Micrograms has done it again! ABC World is a hit with both our students and teachers. The antics from these underwater characters quickly charm students into doing their best work. This program is a wonderful addition to our software library."