eFireflies Stages 6 - 10

overview

The Oxford eFireflies stages 6-10 CD-ROM is a superbly presented collection of non-fiction, e-books. It comprises six interactive titles: four talking books and two ‘Explore-a-books’, with a range of activities on offer that consolidate and extend learning. Although they are intended to support the Oxford Reading Tree, they provide an excellent teaching and learning resource for the teaching of non-fiction texts. In addition, these titles are suited to the delivery of Literacy through ICT in Year 2.

The non-fiction texts on offer are ideal for teaching conventional features of this genre, along with sentence and word level work. However as interactive e-books, they also include opportunities to develop radial reading skills and deliver content through the use of high quality images, pop-up and moving pictures and sounds. Some use Science, DT or History as contexts, with titles such as ‘Glorious Mud’, ‘Skeletons’, ‘Things that sting’, ‘Skateboards’, ‘Shipwrecks’ and ‘Diamonds’. The ‘Glorious Mud’ title actually takes children through the steps of an experiment with mud.

The front screen presents all six books on offer while Flash, a talking firefly, prompts the user to begin. Throughout, sentences are highlighted and read out to the pupils (unless deselected). The CD-ROM is easily networked and once installed on PCs, the CD ROM is no longer required.

There is also an opportunity for the children to make their own book. Though well structured, pupils can select which information and images they would like, adding their own text along the way. Their own books are printable and saved automatically, and become yet another feature that can be viewed onscreen.

From my own experience, eFireflies works just as well with any group size: whole class, small groups or pairs. I used it successfully with guided reading groups, as the children were instantly enthused by the look and feel of the package and it only took seconds before the children began to use and explore the books independently. The screens are attractive, functional and uncluttered.

The product gives some planning support to the teacher with a quick glance Activity Guide and, with each book, a list of word and text level objectives that can be taught through the text. There is also a selection of printable assessment sheets to record progress and a facility to monitor individual or group progress through the books and activities is available onscreen.

With several other teacher options available (such as whether the book automatically reads upon opening a ‘page’) this has proven to be a flexible and interesting teaching and learning resource that embeds ICT into the literacy curriculum naturally and effectively.