Shutterbug Jake and the Sounds Letters Make

For Grades K - 1
Compatible

Children may click on any picture to hear it named. This will help name any picture a child may find confusing, and will allow children to listen carefully and repeatedly to voiced pronunciations. Children may also hear the sound of any phoneme by clicking on the audio symbol to the right of the letter(s). After associating, in this case, the Beginning Consonant with the correct picture, the child clicks and drags the letter to the picture. Help will be provided any time a child makes a second mistake with a given phoneme. Each activity consists of eight matches. The eight boxes at the upper right provide a quick indication as to how a student is doing. The blue highlighted box shows the current problem. The star on previously answered questions indicates that an answer was correct on the first attempt. A lack of stars may indicate assistance is needed.

The format for Activity 1 is the same whether working with Beginning Consonants, Beginning Blends, Ending Consonants, Ending Blends, Short Vowels, Long Vowels, Long Vowel Digraphs, Vowel Digraphs and Diphthongs, or some combination of these.

Following each set of 8 problems, children may choose one of two fun reward activities. In Memory Match, children flip over cards and try to pair words and pictures. In Rhyming Riddle, children can click to hear a riddle narrated, and must choose the word that completes the riddle. They may click on the pictures to hear them named, but must click on the word to complete the riddle. Children working on reading more independently, may choose not to click on the audio symbol to hear each riddle read aloud. Instead, they may click only on the words with which they are uncertain. Though these activities utilize phonics skills, they are intended as a fun diversion from the main activities. Student work in Memory Match and Rhyming Riddle is not scored

Shutterbug Jake and the Sounds Letters Make includes Easy Track, Micrograms' latest record keeping and management system. This system collects student performance data from around the network and consolidates it into screen reports (partially described above), printable reports, and printable graphs. Printable reports 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, for every class member with class totals, or for teacher-designated special groups. 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.

Easy Track also allows teachers to adjust program activities for students individually or to change options for the entire class at once. In the network environment, Easy Track provides our most advanced network security, convenience, and management features, many of which can be used in the stand-alone environment as well.