Blue Ribbon Reviews April 2005
By Linda Lindroth

From reading support for struggling readers to maintaining school security, this collection of software products will help you establish a successful learning environment as you complete the school year.

Thinking Reader
Thinking Reader by Tom Snyder Productions (a Scholastic Company) provides strategies and support for analyzing a story and helping students to build comprehension and critical thinking skills. The Thinking Reader library has nine titles for readers in grades 5-8.

Each title of Thinking Reader – I reviewed Tuck Everlasting – is organized by chapter and passage. Students select a chapter and passage, read the passage by clicking the Play button to hear the story and then select a reading strategy to help them understand the text. Each passage has vocabulary links to a glossary with all the words from the book. As they read, students stop at various points to make a prediction or respond to one of seven strategy prompts. Responses are typed in and e-mailed to the Work Log. All responses are stored in the Work Log along with the date, chapter and passage, level, strategy used and response. Guidance for each strategy is provided with hints and model responses from two characters.

Justin and Destiny talk aloud about their thinking on the selected strategy and then show their written responses as examples. All words can be read aloud, with one click reading the word and a double click reading an entire sentence. Students can go back in and edit their responses and teachers can read responses recorded in the Work Log and make comments.

Strategy Help. The Strategy Help addresses these reading strategies: Summarize, Question, Clarify, Predict, Visualize, Feeling and Reflect. The tutorial help answers, What is it? Why should I do it? How do I do it? and gives hints and tips. All of these reading strategies help students understand the text and build better comprehension about what is being read.

Program options can be customized. Audio choices include human voice or computer voice as well as the ability to change the volume and the speed of the voice. A toggle button lets you use a larger or smaller font size based on student need. Teacher Management lets you set options for the class, print reports and look at student quizzes on passage comprehension. Under View Student Progress, the teacher can see quiz results, time spent using the software, and the work log. Each title has 4-6 quizzes covering vocabulary, inference, and recall.

This is a welcome tool for providing readers with strategies they can use to improve their comprehension and understanding of the text they read. For more information, or to get a list of all nine book titles, visit www.tomsnyder.com or call 800-342-0236. Win/OS X, 10-student license – $500/title.

BrainPop
BrainPop is a well-organized collection of three to five minute movies divided by themes in the core content areas. Each movie has curriculum written especially for each movie. Clicking on Movie List makes it easy to see an annotated list of all the movies available and browse for topics which fit your curriculum. Or, click on one of the core content areas (Science, Social Studies, Math, Health and Technology) to choose a particular theme.

Movie Clips. Each movie uses a character-based story format with animation and diagrams to clearly explain the topic. All movie packages consist of five key elements. There's a quiz which can be used for pre-and post-assessment. A timeline of related dates helps provide a context for the subject within the real world. An "Experiment," which can be completed at home or school, helps to apply the concepts in the movie. A complete lesson plan with student activity page(s) helps to guide instruction.

Content areas. Social Studies is the newest content area to be added to the online subscription service. The addition of monthly packets expands the topics to include Black History, Women's History and current events. The Tsunami movie was added after the tsunami disaster in December 2004. A Presidential Cabinet movie was added after the presidential elections last fall.

The movie clips are captivating for students and the related resources make it easy to implement in the classroom curriculum. There is even a Zoom button to allow the movie to be shown in a full screen for whole class instruction. There are dozens of topics all correlated to national standards, with direct links from the content area standards to the individual movies.

For more information, or to try BrainPop free for 14 days, visit the website at www.brainpop.com Home Use, $79/year. Class license, $135; Lab, $480; School, $800

AR Summer Reading Program
Teachers and parents know that reading throughout the summer is important to retaining student learning. Renaissance Learning, Inc. is making the Accelerated Reader program available to students during the summer. The AR Summer Reading Program will provide the entire AR Renaissance Place Complete subscription package with more than 80,000 quizzes. The goal is to encourage summer reading.

Community programs will use a local coordinator to organize quiz taking sites – including schools and public libraries. Local coordinators will be compensated for their work and schools will receive certificates for products.

To find out more about starting an AR Summer Reading Program in your area, call 800-656-6895.

School CheckIn
This is an automated school checkin program installed on a designated computer in your school's main office. When connected to a Dymo LabelWriter 330, it is possible to quickly print name badges, hall passes, tardy slips, visitor passes, etc. How great is that?

School CheckIn can be an ID check for faculty and students, identify parents, track early dismissals, monitor volunteers and even keep track of their hours.

For more information, visit www.schoolcheckin.com Win/Mac, $85 annual subscription.

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Linda K. Lindroth is Technology Editor and Web Coordinator for Teaching Pre K-8. She is also a Technology Resource Teacher in a K-5 computer lab in Lexington, KY.