[appimg 791978180]
App Info
Price: [app 791978180] {price}
AppStore User Rating: {stars}[/app]
Overview
Looney Tunes Phonics combines the fun of Looney Tunes cartoons with sound phonics instruction. Anyone who enjoys these classic characters will love this app!
Features include:
- 10 free lessons with 90 more available for purchase
- Covers phonics skills from pre-kindergarten through grade 3
- Built-in rewards sequences
- Customizable lesson sequences
- Detailed records of student performance
Quality
Looney Tunes Phonics is an outstanding app. It runs smoothly and delivers a large amount of content for free with option to purchase more. It does require an active internet connection to run, and the child’s place within a lesson is not saved if the lesson is closed before finishing. The lessons are quite long (20-30 minutes), so the option to save progress would be very convenient.
Education
Looney Tunes Phonics provides comprehensive phonics instruction with clear narration and sound production. It uses one of the standardized sequences of sound, word family and word introduction, so it is likely to be in line with what your child is learning in school. A wide array of activities support skill acquisition, as well. Beginners choose letters on the screen that match voiced sounds, then find the letters on a virtual keyboard when asked. More experienced students find words with common beginning sounds, ending sounds, rhymes, and more.
There are two free lessons at each of the five levels from pre-kindergarten to grade 3. They provide an excellent overview of the capabilities of the app and the skills covered. In addition, each lesson is between 20 and 30 minutes in length, so there are over three hours of free content. An older student who needs a review of skills at these levels will be able to take advantage of all of it, but younger students, such as preschoolers or kindergarteners, may find that the majority of the free lessons are too difficult to be beneficial.
The app’s record-keeping feature is superb. Multiple students can be accommodated simply by changing student names when a new lesson is opened. Adults can see the lessons that have been completed, the number of items that were correct on the first try, and a list of troublesome concepts that required more than one attempt to be answered correctly. This means that adults can drill down in the student’s performance to find, for example, that the letter combination “KN” was difficult for the student. It would be nice to have a way to reset the records, as well, so when a new student or sibling uses the app, the records continue to be so useful. It would also be very nice if parents could pick out particular skills to have a student complete, rather than the standard grade level mix.
Entertainment
This app is highly entertaining, especially for anyone who enjoys classic Looney Tunes characters. However, if you feel these cartoons are violent or offensive in any way, you will want to find a different app for phonics. That being said, the antics of Roadrunner and Coyote, Bugs, and all of the others will entertain nearly any child. Shorts or scenes from each cartoon are shown between educational activities, which are nearly guaranteed to keep children engaged and coming back for more, even throughout the lengthy lessons. Adults can adjust the amount of entertainment, though, or remove it entirely. The cartoons are built with a series of modules, so even when the title is the same, the app puts different modules into the sequence. It’s unlikely to see the “same” cartoon very often because of this feature.
Value
This app is free with a lot of trial content, so it’s a great value. The extra lessons cost $3.99 for half grade level (10 lessons), $6.99 for a whole grade level (20 lessons), or all 100 lessons for $29.99, which works out to about thirty cents per lesson. It’s a good deal no matter which level you choose to use. The alternative pathways suggested for advanced students and for struggling students give some flexibility about the sequencing, and students can replay lessons whenever they wish.
Child Friendliness
The games on this app are very intuitive to use and children will easily master the intricacies of how to work everything. There are no outside advertisements or links to the open internet. However, the main screen opens up to an array of purchase options that are only protected by your password to the App Store. There would be no way for nonreaders to know which lessons are free, which are purchased, and which have not been purchased. These options should be behind an effective parent gate to make sure that young children can’t accidentally try to purchase content. Developers may want to consider creating a parents area that contains access to the suggested purchases, a privacy policy, and perhaps some explanation of the lesson sequencing and content. When a lesson is chosen, children can easily access the options for it, as well, turning entertainment content on and off, changing the speed of presentation, and so forth. These options should be protected, as should children’s records of activity.
Looney Tunes Phonics is an entertaining way to learn or review basic phonics concepts from pre-kindergarten through third grade.