Island Reading Journey

Reviewer: Denise deMello
demello4@home.com
Special Education Teacher
Conard HIgh School

Island Reading Journey from Sunburst, 2000
http://www.sunburst.com
Mac/Win CD-ROM
The software comes with a fantastic teacher's resource notebook with masters for homework, a summary of the 100 titles and vocabulary lists for all 100 novels.
Evaluated on a PC
Reviewed: October 2000
List price: $79.95 single copy
Rating: 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, Way Cool!

Island Reading Journey is a multimedia program that features reading comprehension activities for 100 intermediate level books. Activities include: multiply choice tests, word scrambles, cloze reading passages, word decoders, crossword puzzles, and essays. Students can select which island to visit and which books to use to complete the activities (they need to of read the book first).

I liked the large lists of titles, something for every student ages 8-12. Many of the titles are part of current grade 4-8 Language Arts curriculum. Activities are highly engaging as well as challenging especially the vocabulary games. The "hints" that were given for the vocabulary game, reinforced the use of synonyms and antonyms. Each student can create their own island adventure, they can work at their own pace. They can also print all their completed activities.

The teacher has the ability to create options to keep track of each student's progress as well as customize the vocabulary activities. There are rubrics for grading essays. Each student logs in under their own name and their progress is saved. Great software to compliment your literature program and encourage independent pleasure reading. Students will really enjoy collected the "stamps" from each of their island adventures.

Also a wonderful program for a library media specialist to support independent reading , could use for a reading club. Outstanding program to build vocabulary. This software would be best for students 8-12 year old students.

Rating: 10!! I had 3 other teachers review this program. Two of them were Speech and Language teachers who could see many uses, especially the activities designed to use vocabulary in context. Everyone wanted a copy and you will too once you have an opportunity to take your
own "Island Reading Journey".

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