Evaluation of PBSKIDS.ORG educational game “SUPER WHY”

SUPER WHY is an educational tool that takes a new approach to learning by promoting reading as a powerful, meaningful experience for children aged 3 to 6 years old. The narrative stories of SUPER WHY are based on classic fairy tales - with a SUPER WHY twist! The stories are content contemporary, age appropriate, and interactive.

The interactive format of this tool allows children to practice the necessary skills needed to be fluent readers, since it accommodates the basic reading skills such as: Emerging Literacy Concepts; Phonemic Awareness; The Alphabet Code; Fluency; Text Comprehension; Spelling; Written Expression/Handwriting. SUPER WHY teaches kids to make inferences through theme comprehension which helps develops their abstract thinking. SUPER WHY incorporates some important elements of literacy that are very important when teaching preschoolers. These elements include: stories, characters, language development, vocabulary, letter identification, letter sounds, rhyming, word families, comprehension, and text. “Because repetition helps kids’ master skills, simple concepts and strategies are repeated within each story. This repetition gives kids a sense of empowerment as they watch and read.”

Each game is hosted by a superhero character that makes the power of reading come alive. The super hero characters encourage a lot of interactivity. The characters look at, talk to, and directly engage kids by repeating phrases or asking for an input such as "When we have a question we look, (children responds) in a book" or give "a big thumbs-up" for a job well done. When kids are able to voice their opinions, it makes them feel smart and powerful, especially when they see how they influence the outcome of each story.

The super hero characters include:
Ø Alpha Pig…with Alphabet power! Letter Identification
Ø Wonder Red...with Word Power! Word Decoding; Word Families; Rhyming
Ø Princess Presto...with Spelling Power! Encoding; Spelling; Beginning Handwriting Skills
Ø Super Why...with the Power to Read! Reading, Reading Comprehension, and Vocabulary
Ø Super You...with the Power to Help! Concepts of Print; Theme Comprehension

The preschooler I used for this evaluation played, Wonder Red...with Word Power! Using her "Wonder Words Basket," Wonder Red overcomes obstacles by rhyming and changing the words in simple word families, such as wall, ball, and tall. Through these games, kids are taught a strategy for decoding words by sounding them out and noticing the same word endings. Wonder Red's catchy rhyming song also helps kids learn how to decode

Websites of interest
http://pbskids.org/superwhy/
http://pbskids.org/