CONTACT:
Sunburst Technology
Julie Gates, 562-621-9521
julie@gatespr.com
Booth #1822 at NECC
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SUNBURST TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCES NEW KEY SKILLS:
PHONICS MASTERY READING SOFTWARE FOR BACK TO SCHOOL
Key Skills: Phonics Mastery software reinforces phonics
skills for students in
grades K to 3 through more than 80 engaging educational activities
PHILADELPHIA, PA, June 28, 2005 - At the National Educational
Computing Conference (NECC) today, Sunburst Technology announced Key
Skills: Phonics Mastery, the latest addition to the award-winning
Key Skills line of software. This new title is for students in
grades K to 3 and targets phonics, the most fundamental reading concept.
Featuring more than 80 educational activities that cover phonics skills
in depth, the program is the most comprehensive title in the Key Skills
Series. Developed with input from expert educators and expected to
ship this fall, Key Skills: Phonics Mastery provides a progressive
and complete presentation of phonics skills with activities that directly
align to all 50 states' standards. Key Skills: Phonics Mastery
is a comprehensive learning tool that supports any language arts curriculum.
The program addresses International Reading Association (IRA) and National
Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) standards for language arts.
Its approach to phonics combines over 80 sequenced, animated and engaging
activities with a robust assessment tool, providing teachers with the
content and flexibility needed to educate students of all abilities. The
program enables teachers to target, assess and remediate the exact skills
they need for their students. Each individual activity is correlated to
curriculum standards in all 50 states, and is designed to provide practice
and reinforcement on a specific phonics skill, such as long vowel sounds,
short vowel sounds, blends and decoding.
"The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development synthesized
the work of more than 100 key researchers to show that children who lack
an awareness of the sound structure of words become poor readers and that
their deficiencies do not improve with age, unless interventions that
incorporate systematic, structured instruction are introduced," said
David Wolff, Sunburst Technology's Vice President of Development. "Key
Skills: Phonics Mastery is a curriculum-based, structured remediation
and assessment tool that is designed to support a wide range of instructional
approaches as it motivates kids to improve their language skills."
The program's full-featured, easy-to-use Management Tool helps teachers
assign activities, capture student performance, create diagnostic reports,
and demonstrate accountability to standards. Key Skills: Phonics Mastery
helps teachers identify at-risk students, and provides the data they need
to apply for Title I funding. For schools that already receive funding,
Key Skills: Phonics Mastery supports the requirements of the Reading
First provision.
With a focus on learning and using the alphabetic principle, the understanding
that there is a predictable relationship between written letters and spoken
sounds, Key Skills: Phonics Mastery provides explicit instructional
support for emergent readers as they:
- Solidify knowledge of the alphabet
- Understand letter-sound correspondences
- Blend sounds, segment words and build decoding skills
- Distinguish onsets and rimes in spoken and written words
- Develop knowledge of base words and word endings
- Construct a foundation for reading and spelling words
The Key Skills line of software has been designed to give teachers
the flexibility to buy the specific skill sets they want and allows them
to easily add new content as more Key Skills programs become available.
All titles in the series utilize a single student interface, and one centralized
Management Tool, keeping students' data together and easily accessible.
Each activity in every title focuses on one specific skill, making it
easy for teachers to isolate the skills they want students to develop.
Key Skills content is developed by educators for educators, based
on skills found in national and state standards. There are 10 titles in
the Key Skills series, including Key Skills for Reading: Letters
and Words and Key Skills for Reading: Basic Word Concepts
Features:
Key Skills: Phonics Mastery includes a number of features that
are new to the Key Skills line. First, all activities are correlated
to state standards, so teachers can select an activity and see which of
their state standards correlate to that activity. Conversely, teachers
can browse their state standards, select one, and see which Key Skills
activities will help them teach that particular standard. They can also
now generate reports showing students' progress against specific state
standards.
The program provides a complete and sequential presentation of all skills
needed to master phonics. It has more robust content with 80 targeted
activities. Also, each activity begins with a short introductory movie
that models for students how to play and explains the skill that they
will practice. In the network versions of the product, activities are
directly correlated to every state's standards. The student interface
is reorganized to better serve readers and non-readers alike. An improved
Key Skills Management Tool provides teachers with greater instructional
strategy options. Another new benefit is a backward compatibility design
that automatically upgrades the new Key Skills Management Tool,
new student interface, and states' standards to all Key Skills
programs previously installed on the user's computer.
Students log on to a redesigned color-coded and scalable interface where
they can choose teacher-assigned or self-selected activities. Students
get started with quick movies that introduce the purpose of their work.
On-screen help provides instructions to students who need assistance,
and read-aloud options help young students follow text and instructions.
The program also provides instant verbal and visual feedback to students
as they answer questions, as well as a reward system for students to earn
stickers when they answer questions correctly on the first try.
The Key Skills Management Tool is a global assessment feature that
integrates the content and student data from all Key Skills titles
on the same computer or server. The newly enhanced Tool provides an easier-to-use
management screen with a simplified "tree structure" approach
for teachers to select activities. Teachers can also see a preview and
description of each activity while they are making their selections.
Students' progress is recorded in the Key Skills Management Tool,
where teachers can view individual student and class reports. When installed
on a school's network, the Tool is especially powerful in helping schools
to document adequate yearly progress for all of their students, as required
by "No Child Left Behind" legislation.
Pricing & Availability
Key Skills: Phonics Mastery will be available this fall in a Macintosh®/Windows®
CD-ROM format through Sunburst Technology and educational resellers such
as Educational Resources®. It includes the company's exclusive School-to-Home™
license for teachers to use the software on home computers for lesson
planning or homework. The suggested price for a single edition of the
full product for grades K to 3 is $149.95. Two grade-specific versions
of the software are also available, Key Skills: Phonics Mastery (Grades
K to 1) and Key Skills: Phonics Mastery (Grades 2 to 3), for
$79.95 each. Network versions also will be available later this winter.
Key Skills: Phonics Mastery includes toll-free technical support,
from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern Time, every business day. For sales and
ordering information, customers can call Sunburst at 800-321-7511, Educational
Resources at 800-624-2926, or their local educational reseller. Information,
a free demo, and online ordering for this title are also available on
www.Sunburst.com/keyskills.
Company Background
Sunburst Technology publishes award-winning instructional software and
the QuickMind.net online learning environment for the K-12 school
market. Proprietary series in the Sunburst lineup include HyperStudio®,
Tenth Planet, and Little Planet. Top selling titles include
HyperStudio, Type to Learn, Hot Dog Stand: The Works, Easy
Book Deluxe and A to Zap! The publisher, a company of Thayer
Capital Partners, is headquartered in Elgin, IL, with its development
center in Valhalla, NY.