Jungle Journey

Overview

Jungle Journey helps children practice sequencing as well as cause and effect skills using a fun single or multi-player board game format. It is part of a series of apps designed to help upper elementary students practice higher-order reading comprehension skills.

Features include:

• 1 to 6 players
• Based on common core standards for reading
• Optional adjustable timer to build response speed
• Play against human or computer generated opponents
• Optional adjustment of winning action/goal from first to finish to most points
• Optional adjustment to number of dice used to control game length
• Background music and sound effects are adjustable

Quality

Jungle Journey provides a fun way for upper elementary students to practice sequencing and cause and effect skills. The high degree of control provided in the Options section is refreshing-it is possible to tailor this software to meet the needs in a wide variety of situations. The Help section is quite detailed and clarifies how to make the best use of many of the options, but everything is so straightforward that users can just jump in and start playing without changing or adjusting anything.

Education

Reading comprehension is vital-it does little good to read text but have no understanding or memory of what’s been read! Jungle Journey offers quick snippets designed to help students focus on sequencing as well as cause and effect, which are two skills that are difficult for many students. Even struggling readers are likely to be successful with this software, because the speed of response can be adjusted. Remove the time limit all together for students who take a long time to read and process, or gradually add time limits when students are ready. The timer is adjustable from 10 to 120 seconds, which gives lots of flexibility for teaching students to respond in shorter times. Computerized opponents are available on two levels, and their questions and responses are shown to the real player(s). The only drawback is that the app does not pause for very long after showing the computerized player’s response. It might be nice if this was controlled by the real player with a button to signal when the question and response had been noted. This would provide a nice learning opportunity that has been somewhat neglected, since the computerized opponent’s response disappears faster than many students would be able to note and process.

Questions are limited to variations on two formats: sequencing and cause/effect. The sequencing questions offer four sentences in random order and students must respond either by identifying which choice should be in a given placement in the correct order, or by choosing the list option that gives the correct order for all of the sentences. It might be nice to have some before/after questions included in this task, but I have not seen any as yet. The cause/effect questions have a short passage to read with one sentence or phrase underlined. The question identifies the underlined section as either the cause or the effect and asks the student to choose the option from the multiple choice responses that correctly gives the companion effect or cause that goes with the identified sentence.

Entertainment

Jungle Journey offers an engaging platform to practice vital reading skills. The app is based on a board game theme, challenging students to answer a question, then “throwing” dice to determine the number of spaces moved around the board. The board has typical bonus and penalty spaces to add excitement to the game, such as instructions to go ahead 2 spaces or lose a turn. Some are thematic; for example, there is a rickety bridge that “falls” if a player lands on the penalty space.

It is nice to be able to control so many elements of the game to personalize it and make it useful in a wide variety of situations. The game accommodates up to six real players, or students can play with computerized opponents.

Value

Jungle Journey contains a lot of content and will entertain students for quite a while. The questions have enough variety that young readers will be challenged but not bored. The level of difficulty is well-matched to the age group. The $4.99 price tag is quite reasonable for hours of engaging practice alone or with friends.

Child Friendliness

This app is very child friendly. There are no in-app purchases, advertising, or links to social media. The app provides no access to the internet.