At Last - Early Reading For Older StudentsThe Spinout Stories CDs, and associated books, have been specifically designed to promote literacy among older students, in the upper primary and early secondary years, who have reading difficulties. Two packs are currently available - Red and Blue. Each pack contains a CD-ROM with four stories on high-interest age related topics such as building sites, diesel engines, surfing, crocodiles, gorillas and dreaming. The blue pack contains The Best Mechanic, Diesels and Dirt, Reptile Zoo and Saltwater Crocodiles. In addition to the CDs the hardest levels of the stories can also be purchased separately in book form, to further support the use of the software. Each Spinout Story has three different reading levels, of which the hardest has optional hypertext links to further information at an even higher reading level. There is also a Teacher's Guide and a set of printable worksheets. The software includes teacher controls, optional tracking facilities to monitor students' progress, extension activities related to the text, and a worksheet generator. Stories. |
10 years to Adult
Whiteboard Compatible †All prices exclude P&P and VAT. |
Hypertext.
At the hardest level, there is an additional "hypertext" option. If this is enabled, students can click
on certain highlighted words in the text or on hot spots in the illustration, revealing additional informative
text which further extends the scope of their reading. The fourth screen-shot above includes hypertext about
the truck in the story.
Reading, writing and extension activities.
As well as reading, students can write their own stories using
the illustrations provided, and can print out the results. The computer will optionally attempt to speak
students' stories using a text-to-speech engine (if available on the computer in question). Each pack also
contains three extension activities: Concentration, Jigsaw and Ladders with the Blue Pack, and
Cloze exercises, a Quiz, and Word Squares with the Red Pack. Screen-shots of some of these are shown below.
Concentration |
Jigsaw |
Ladders |
Teacher facilities.
Comprehensive controls let the teacher set various options and degrees of difficulty. Using
an optional log-in system, teachers can tailor the package to the needs of individual students or whole classes.
A tracking facility lets teachers see which features have been used by which students and for how long.
Revision 19
Last modified on 12/06/16 .
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