Sarasota PC Monitor
The Writing Lesson
A Software Review
by Elsie M. Mason
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.The Writing Lesson contains information about the CD contents and the license agreement as well as a collection of printable pages or worksheets for a child to practice writing. This CD can be used as a supplement to "The Reading Lesson".
There are three styles of writing included on the CD. The first is the primary style of printing which is suitable for pre-K and kindergarten age children (3-6). The second is the manuscript style for first, second and third graders. The third is the cursive style for second and third graders and older students. Each of these styles contain letters, words, compound words, and short sentences to print or write.
These three areas of printing/writing are straightforward with few embellishments. Some of the sheets have a picture to illustrate letters.
The Primary style of printing has 107 pages of letters of the alphabet, 35 pages of words and 20 pages of numbers for a total of 164 practice sheets. The manuscript or script style of printing has 81 pages of letters and 25 pages of words and compound words for a total of 107 practice worksheets. The cursive style of writing contains 54 pages of letters of the alphabet, 16 pages of words and compound words, and 35 pages of sentences in verse form for a total of 107 worksheets. Some of the worksheets have a picture provided with lines for the child to use his imagination to write a short story relating to the picture on that page.
The program produces the pages in miniature on the left side of your screen, so that you may scroll down or up and choose the sheet or sheets to be printed for use by the youngster. It will also show the chosen page on the right side of your sceen in an enlarged format, so you can check the details of the worksheet before you print it.
Pages can be printed with a black-and-white or with a color printer. There are enough different pages included so that the child can practice a certain letter more if he needs to practice it longer. This CD program is a good working tool for teaching a child to print or write well.
The program requires Adobe Acrobat 3.0 or higher to run. I used Adobe 4.0 with good results. If you do not have this program, you can obtain it free from AOL or from Adobe directly via the Internet.
This program also requires at least a 200MHz CPU with 32MB RAM, a CD-ROM drive, 40MB of hard drive space, a sound card, a 256 color monitor or above, a black-and-white or color printer and Windows 95 or above. I used Windows 98 with good results.
The Writing Lesson is produced by the Mountcastle Company of San Ramon, California (mntcastle@earthlink.net). It can be purchased locally for $29.95.
NOTE: All three of these programs (The Reading Lesson, The Writing Lesson and The Storybook) are designed to work effectively with the twenty percent of youngsters having difficulty with reading and/or writing for one reason or another. :
Copyright 2001. This article is from the October 2001 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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