| RATING: 4.5 | |
| SUBJECT AREA: | Reading |
| VOCATIONAL AREAS: | Automotive, Health Care, Clerical, and Construction |
| PUBLISHER: | Educational Activities, Inc.
P.O. Box 392 Freeport, NY 11520 (800) 645-3739 FAX: (516) 623-9282 e-mail: learn@edact.com http://www.edact.com |
| COST: | $295.00 (Set of 6 disks, 6 back-ups, management, teacher's
manual with reproducible activity masters)
$1150.00 (Complete 4 set series with back-ups, teacher's manual with reproducible activity masters) |
USE: Pre-GED, GED, High School Alternative, Workplace Education, Vocational Classes
COMPUTER: CD-ROM/ WIN/ MAC/ DOS/ APPLE
GRADE LEVEL: 3.5 - 7.9
SPECIFIC SKILLS: Reading skills include: main idea, details, sequencing, recognizing problems, making inferences, determining cause and effect, drawing conclusions, and identifying word meanings.
DESCRIPTION: Reading In The Workplace is designed to develop and improve the essential vocabulary and comprehension skills required for job related reading. The vocationally oriented passages are short (3 to 4 paragraphs) and informative. The variety of topics provides a good introduction and overview to the automotive, health care, clerical, and construction careers. Each vocational reading program is separated into three units which cover different workplace topics at progressive reading levels. (Unit 1 - 3.0 to 5.0, Unit 2 - 5.0 to 7.0 and Unit 3 - 7.0 to 9.0). Each unit contains 16 stories that are how-to-topics or informational in nature. After reading the selection, the student responds to six specific types of comprehension questions. (See specific skill list above.) If a student has difficulty understanding the question, he/she may access the help option which defines the skill area. A built-in glossary, that is easy to use, encourages the student to identify the meanings of unfamiliar words. If the student makes an error, branching provides a clue to assist the student and also gives an option to review the story. on the second incorrect attempt, an explanation of the correct choice is displayed. Then, the student is automatically sent back to the story with key sentences that are highlighted. The management system provides records, which are in alphabetical order, of all students on the screen to the printer. Another option provides for the grouping of students under specific teachers and classes. The score option indicates the number of times the story was attempted, the latest ratio score of each skill area, the total ratio score, and the score as a percentage. Each program provides over 40 vocabulary worksheets.
EVALUATION SUMMARY: This program presents an interesting menu to the students for each vocation. Instructional lessons refer to real life situations and current information related to the health care, automotive, clerical, and construction fields. The chapter titles for each unit are listed in the teacher's manual, so our instructors could easily assign specific chapters that correlated to their own vocational curriculum. The Geriatric Nurse's Aide instructor found the Health Care Units to be an excellent program for her students with lower reading levels. They were improving their reading skills and learning or reviewing important information they needed to pass her course. Keep in mind that the information contained in the units is not extremely technical, but the topics covered provide an excellent survey and an introduction to the important areas of study in each field. We found RIW to be successful with adults in our remedial reading program and in our general vocational classes.