What is Leapfrog Tag?
The basic Leapfrog tag system consists of the Tag pen and a small inbuilt speaker. The tag pen is used to read and play along with Tag-compatible books. The system comes with an introductory reader (Ozzie & Mack) but they also offer a range of classic children's stories, as well as licensed books such as Spongebob, Kung Fu Panda and others. The idea is that as the child taps on words or key areas the Tag pen will talk - reading out the words in the book, or playing simple games through it.
READING GAMES FOR KIDS
Can Leapfrog Tag Help Children Learn to Read?
Within this product- and many others- parents assume that by clicking on a word the child will hear it and learn to link what she or he sees with this word- and will be reading! That these products will magically bring books to life. That's not how children learn to read at all.
While this is a fun and quirky toy anything that focuses on 'whole words' - rather than learning how the word was 'put together' - will not result in your child acquiring the skills required in order to read and spell with confidence. We know this from worldwide clinical studies and research into early literacy development. Browse through any studies - or read government reports - and you will realize that in order for ALL children to learn to read and spell - and to prevent reading failure - they need to be taught specific skills. Children won't learn to read and spell on their own - or just by sharing books and stories with them - they need to actually understand certain concepts- i.e. how the English 'code' works.
Children who fail more often than not have poor 'phonemic awareness'. This means the ability to distinguish and manipulate the individual sounds of English language. Unfortunately many teachers still do not choose to take a preventative approach or offer systematic, direct phonics instruction until a child has been failing. Any parent who wants to prevent difficulties therefore should focus on anything that will help their child to learn the sounds in words. You might also be interested to know that research undertaken over the last decade or so has shown that the brains of children who are failing actually change when taught using a direct, synthetic phonics approach - to more closely resemble the brains of children with great literacy skills. So we now know that as long as they are given the opportunity to learn using a good phonics program all children can succeed. Why wait until they are failing however? A preventative approach seems far fairer to the children - and will prevent associated issues such as poor self-esteem and escalating poor behaviour. If parents and teachers knew that some US prisons are actually predicting future prison intake by looking at Year 3 and 4 reading scores there might be a shift in thinking - and in what opportunities we offer our children. So creating something that will help children is great - Leapfrog Tag doesn't currently offer them that opportunity. In addition, not only do we welcome quality resources, the children also need a real person there guiding and instructing them. It's actually very different to the teaching of concepts relating to maths or science. Literacy research shows this need for direct instruction in phonics.
What Are The Skills Children Need In Order To Read and Spell?
Although there a a range of skills- including the ability to actual understand what they are reading, these are some essential skills. Children should learn that:
1/ Words are made up of sounds e.g. cat has 3 sounds - i.e. c+a+t and shout has 3 sounds i.e. sh+ou+t
2/ Sounds are blended together in our speech to form words - and are represented on paper from left to right using pictures/ symbols that represent these sounds.
3/ Sometimes 2 sounds make another e.g. 's' is a sound, 'h' is a sound and 'sh' is another, different sound.
4/ Sometimes a sound (on paper) can be read as having two or more sounds in speech - e.g. 'ow' could have 2 meanings- e.g. as in cow or as in bow
Might sound complicated but it's actually not. What we are trying to do is teach children the sounds in words, how to represent them on paper (letters) - and how to manipulate and blend them. You can't do that if you are working with 'whole' words from the beginning - children need to understand from the beginning that words are just create from sounds - and that the written code is directly linked with our spoken language.
Imagine if a child is asked to learn the whole word 'nip' - and then you ask them to spell the word 'pin' They cant do it if they learn it as a whole word - because they don't understand how it is made up. If however they learn the sounds 'p' and 'i' and 'n' then they can also spell the work 'nip' because they would just manipulate the sounds they already know!
Free Ways to Teach Your Child to Read, Write and Spell
Using Leapfrog Tag and other electronic games is fun for children of course- however they are likely to confuse children about what reading and spelling is at a basic level - they will think of the squiggly lines - the word - as a whole - instead of looking at the parts of the word. They will think that reading is more to do with memory and using the visual clues on the paper to guess the word.
When teaching reading and spelling we need to really focus on the words we speak - and how they are spoken - the sounds used in the words. For example that the word 'show' is spoken using 2 sounds - we say 'sh' followed by 'ow'. When children can 'hear' the sounds it's just a case of learning how to put those sounds on paper. So start with single sounds - and words that can be created using single sounds. You might start with the sounds 's, a, n, i, p and t' - which are the first sounds taught in Jolly Phonics (a synthetics phonics program) - these sounds are chosen because you can create so many words from those sounds. The children can learn to 'spell' words using those sounds- by learning to hear the sounds in words- and also how to 'read' them- by recognising the individual sounds on the paper and reading them (sounding them out) from left to right.
Teaching children to read and spell is actually very easy if you work your way through the confusion (that usually comes with a price tag) and simply arm yourself with information. This product could have been really great- if it focused on the individual sounds in the words rather than the whole words. So there is definitely scope for future development - and I appreciate that the intentions of the product developer are good. We all want children to learn to read and spell with confidence - however we have to use methods and resources based on sound literacy research.
When you understand the skills children need you can introduce and reinforce these concepts yourself - at home, in the car, while shopping - and it can be fun, and FREE! OK maybe not completely free- you do need to make the cards to show what the sounds look like (letters are really just pictures of sounds) and can make a range of games using card and a pen. But we're talking a couple of dollars rather than hundreds if not thousands! It's something you can start as early as when children are speaking. If they are able to make the sounds in words then they are able to learn the pictures used to represent those sounds.
A free clip on YouTube that gives a quick FREE overview of what parents can do themselves can be seen here:
www.youtube.com/watch It doesn't link to any products - or anything for sale - just free advice for parents - and this is a free chat forum for parents which is managed by literacy specialists who moderate it without charge just to be a part of raising standards of literacy - groups.google.com.au/group/parents-aboard/
If you do buy games with a purpose of helping your child to read and spell then make sure they actually introduce and reinforce the skills we know are required, following years of clinical studies and research into this field. Bottom line- anyone can teach a child to read, write and spell! You don't need fancy electronic games and equipment and can often speed up the process by avoiding them- when they aren't in line with the numerous government reports and recommendations that are easily accessible to parents and teachers online.
Will Children Learn the Skills Required to Read and Spell Using Leapfrog Tag?
Emma Hartnell-Baker BEd Hons. MA Special Educational Needs. Cert Life Coaching
'The Child Listener™' - A Voice for Kids
Emma is also a leading specialist in the field of early literacy development and is the Director of 'Read Australia™'
Read Australia offer a range of free tools and resources for parents and teachers.
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