Research has shown that when kids are not involved with learning activities over the summer, their skills don’t just stay where they were at the end of the school year. Instead, your kids lose ground and retention of what they learned over the prior school year. So, one thing you can do to prevent this learning slide, is to play learning games over the summer.
Here is a Review of Bonnie Terry’s learning grammar game The Sentence Zone written by Lori Seaborg of http://www.FreelyEducate.com:

We are having a great time learning grammar.

“What?!” you say, “You’re having great time in grammar class?”

Why, yes. That’s exactly what I meant. Thanks to The Sentence Zone, a grammar game designed by Bonnie Terry Learning, grammar can not only be bright and colorful, but as much fun as a game of Monopoly. Here is how it works, as described by Bonnie Terry:

If you’re looking for a fun way to improve writing and grammar skills, this game is for you! For 2 to 6 players, grades 1st and up. Rules are easily mastered. The Sentence Zone can be played at six levels – from Level 1 in which the player builds a subject and verb sentence, to Level 6 in which the player builds complex sentences with independent and dependent clauses. With over 500 color coded cards, students are sure to be unique and entertaining every time. A great reinforcing individual activity where a player keeps track of his score from day to day, trying to top his previous score, or a great group activity where competition drives creativity and learning.

It took me a little while to figure out The Sentence Zone. It wasn’t a game that we could play right out of the box. But after reading the directions, and realizing the many directions the game could go, we got started learning our grammar and – enjoying – it! Since enjoyment leads the way to a love of learning, The Sentence Zone is a success in our home.

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So, do yourself a favor, check out The Sentence Zone and Bonnie Terry’s other reading game and math game too!

Sally Shaywitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia states, “I urge parents of dyslexic children [or any child] to make fluency training – repeated oral reading – their number one priority. Because it involves reinforcement rather than teaching a child a new concept, it is ideally suited for the home.”

Here is what April from http://homeschoolblogger.com has to say about Bonnie Terry’s reading fluency program Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills.

We received  Five Minutes To Better Reading Skills to review from Bonnie Terry Learning. I’ve been using the Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills with my 8 year old son.  He’s reading, but still lacks confidence and speed.  He loves doing the speed drills in the book!  He’d rather do that than try to read a book, actually.  It’s partly because it is instant success.  He looks at a list of short words that he can read with over 90% accuracy.

Too many beginning reading books throw in harder words every now and then that discourage him. The goal of Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills is to read a list of words (from left to right)  as quickly and accurately as you can within 5 minutes.  The teacher keeps track of how many words are missed, and how many are read within the 5 minutes.  That is used to calculate the “words per minute” rate, and the student’s accuracy.  There is a helpful chart at the beginning that shows what speed different grades should be reading at, so you can judge your child’s reading ability and their progress. A student cannot move onto the next list until they have improved their speed and don’t miss more than 4 words per page.

This reading drill helps them begin to “recall” their phonetic sounds more quickly and blend them together quicker.  The drill helps their brain establish better retrieval of words, which helps them read faster, which helps them stay focused on and remember what they are reading.  Reading speed increases reading comprehension.  The harder your brain has to work to actually read the words, the less your brain can remember what you read.

Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills includes a spiral-bound softcover teacher’s book and a student book. The teacher uses a plastic overlay and a write-on/wipe-off marker to keep track of the student’s progress.  The books are totally reusable, non-consumable.  The teacher’s manual includes helpful charts for tracking your student’s progress.  The student book and teacher’s guide are sold for $60.00.  This is not a complete phonics program, but is phonetically based and should be used to supplement other phonics programs. He has been doing well, and we will continue mixing the reading drills in with reading practice from books to continue to improve his reading skills.

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So,  parents, spend five minutes a day and improve your child’s reading skills.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

This review is difficult for me to write because this product had such a dramatic and positive effect for one of our children.  It has been an answer to prayer, a break-through for our child who has struggled with auditory comprehension for years.  I am grateful for the opportunity to use this product that we would not have otherwise had access to,  thankful for God’s sovereignty that our family was chosen for this review and that the vendor determined to send us this particular product (as part of the TOS Bloggers Program).

So as you read this review realize that I’m not unbiased, know that I’m indebted to this product for helping my child in a way that I had failed to help him on my own and take from it what you will.

Bonnie Terry Learning focuses on products for the struggling learner.  The goal is to enable you to be better equipped to develop strong reading, writing and math skills in your child with dyslexia, ADD, Autism or other general learning difficulties.  Even gifted children can struggle in some of these areas and Bonnie Terry aims at smoothing out those bumps in the road of education.  They try to help you “think outside the box” to address your child’s difficulties from an angle, direction or perspective that you may not have considered, a direction that may be the difference between success or struggle for your child.  Bonnie Terry offers a variety of games and products to improve reading, writing, math and study skills for children 7 years and older.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent our family The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap ($67).  Rocket Rap is geared for 1st  grade through adult to help develop and strengthen reading or listening comprehension.  The game comes with 3 sets of cards written at different reading/listening levels (2nd-3rd grade, 4th-6th grade and 7th-12th grade).  Each set of cards can be used in several different ways.  Children can find the factual information, the main point or work on sequencing.  Children are able to read the cards themselves or may listen as you read to them in order to work on either reading or listening comprehension.  This versatility makes it easy to play the game with children at multiple reading/listening levels at the same time.  The cards are self-correcting and include hints to help your child succeed and even allow for using a helper in the scoring.

The Rocket Rap game consists of a high-quality, over-sized vinyl game mat, 3 sets of cards, four playing pieces and a die.  Play progresses by the child reading or listening to the paragraph on the card.  Then they complete their task depending on their level.  Beginners name two facts from the card, intermediates relay the main point of the paragraph AND two facts and advanced students use several cards at a time and put them in the proper chronological order.  Each time the child completes their task they get to roll the die and move.  If they need to use one of the helpers you take one point off of their roll.

All of our children from 1st grade up were able to play together, which as you know is an important feature for our family.  Our older children (10, 11 and 13) were able to easily complete the comprehension activities on all levels of cards, but enjoyed working on the sequencing.  Our 9 year old was happy to play with the 7th-12th grade cards.   The game was interesting enough to the kids that they wanted to play multiple times, even when some of the novelty had worn off.

Pros:

* multi-level play

* nice, high quality game

* lots of fun facts about people and planets included on the cards

* improves focus on the task at hand

* gives older children an opportunity to read out loud

* ability to focus on several different aspects of comprehension

Cons:

* price

* there should be more cards (in my opinion)

* not a fast-paced, edge of your seat type of game, but our children all enjoyed playing it, so what can I say?

What Rocket Rap did for our child:

The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap had amazing results for one of our children.   We have been working with him on comprehension for years.  I often have him draw pictures of what I’m reading, we act things out and we read just a few phrases at a time and ask him questions whenever we are dealing with auditory learning.  He simply struggles in this area.  I was interested to see how he would do with Rocket Rap.

I began with the easiest level.  I read the card to him and he was to tell me 2 facts from the card.  When it was time for him to answer all I got was a blank stare.  When prompted with the helpers, he was still unable to answer.  I was honestly shocked that he could not do this.  The cards we were using only have 3-5 sentences, are chock full of facts and he couldn’t pick out one.  I ended up modifying the game for him, rather than have him tell me two facts per card to earn one roll of the die, I gave him one roll of the die for each fact he could pick out and we used lots of helpers.  He was still unable to finish the game.

We began playing Rocket Rap more often.  The improvement was rapid and dramatic!  By the end of the next game he was able to play without my previous modifications and currently it is easy enough for him to pick out facts while listening that he likes to try reading the card himself.

For the first time in his life our child will raise his hand when Mark asks questions during family worship and he will know the answer.  He will come up to us after church and spontaneously tell us something that he learned from the sermon.  He is so amazingly proud of himself and I’m amazingly thankful.

Final thoughts:

As I mentioned this is a tough review.  For 8 of our children this game would be a fun, helpful activity that is not worth $67, but for one child, for these results, I would happily pay double.  We’ve tried things similar to this in the past, we’ve been focused on this problem for years, but Rocket Rap has been the first activity that has been successful.

If you have a child who struggles with reading or listening comprehension, I certainly think that Bonnie Terry’s The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap is worth a look.  If any of you decide to go this route, I’d love to hear what you think.  Have our results been typical?

You may read more reviews of Rocket Rap and other Bonnie Terry Learning products at The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew blog.  You may read more of my homeschool curriculum reviews on my review page.

Bonnie Terry Learning sent The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap to our family free of charge (part of the TOS Bloggers Program) to enable me to write this review.  All opinions expressed are my own and I am not otherwise reimbursed for any reviews here on Raising Olives.

Listen to what Sara Hathaway had to say about the difference Bonnie Terry’s Products made with her son.

Hope this is helpful.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Here is what Heather Jackowitz, Staff Writer, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine had to say about it.

“I really love games that reinforce my children’s lessons. I checked out a math game from Bonnie Terry Learning, The Math Zone. In The Math Zone, the object is to make the most points within a set amount of turns. There are three decks of cards: an operations deck (add, subtract, multiply, or divide), a deck of low numbers for younger children, and a deck of higher numbers for older children. Number cards have two numbers on them. Players choose an operation card and a number card and perform the given task. The answer for each operation is given on the back of the number cards, and players check their own work after calculating the answer. If the answer is correct, the player scores that amount of points. If the answer is incorrect, no points are scored. Bonus operation cards mean you double your total, and Sorry operation cards mean you half your answer. About the hardest problem to solve in the low number deck would be 35 x 7. Children would also need to know their basic division facts, and how to add and subtract with regrouping. In the higher number deck, children would need to be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers like 2457 and 63. I played the game with my third grader, and she beat me a couple of times, because she kept drawing multiplication cards, and I kept getting subtraction! I also noticed that she checked her work more thoroughly than she does with her math lessons! This would be a great game for keeping up skills during summer vacation or whenever you take a break from regular math lessons.”
– Product Review by: Heather Jackowitz, Staff Writer, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

Get The Math Zone here. Hope this is helpful. Have fun playing games!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Remember, I work with students from 1st grade through adults. Some have been identified with dyslexia, or a learning disability. Some of my students are falling through the cracks. Some are even gifted. Even my wiggly ADHD students do well with it since it’s hand-on. But, it doesn’t matter. When I can improve a student’s retention with using a color coded game I’m going to do it.

I like to have my students sort out the cards so they start to get a feel for the types of words that are in each category. For instance, they might not realize that the word about is an adverb. When they initially sort out the word cards by color, they get an idea of what types of words are in each part of speech.

Then I have them look at the cover of the box so they see how to set up the game and that  the game strip is just there so they will have an easy reference point for placing the cards. It is NOT a game board, it is not used for making sentences. It is just used as a reference for placing the cards. They know they will be making their sentence in front of themselves while I make mine in front of me.

I use this game with students from 1st grade on up – even high school students and adults. With my advanced students (any age) we do more sophisticated sentences and grammar work. But, back to the basics…

My younger students soon realize they need to have a gray card (capital letter), a blue card (noun), a red card (verb), and a buff card (punctuation) in order to have a sentence.
They learn they can add adjectives, adverbs, or prepositional phrases to their base sentence to make it more interesting, but they need to only have one subject and one verb for the first round of the game.

For example, the following are all legal 1st round sentences.

The dog barks.            The dog barks loudly.               The dog barks loudly at the park.

When a student makes a 3-word sentence I often start asking questions to encourage them to make more interesting sentences. This helps them to see how to improve and expand their sentence.

Example with prompts:

The dog barks.

(What kind of dog is he? Let’s use these adjective cards to find out. How does he bark? Let’s use an adverb to tell us how.)

The big dog barks loudly.

(What color is the dog? Use another adjective to tell us. Where does he bark? Use a preposition, article, and a noun to tell us.)

The big brown dog barks loudly at the park.

This type of conversation helps to equalize the game with more proficient learners and helps that younger student to become proficient more quickly.

(Sometimes making funny sentences makes the game even more fun and sentence writing is no longer work.)

The long hairy dog barks loudly at the tiny ant.

Then the magic happens! I have my students go to their bookwork where they are supposed to underline the subject once and verb twice. Instead I have them use colored pencils (blue and red) and underline their subjects with the blue pencil and underline the verb with the red pencil. (They are able to identify the subjects and verbs more readily because they have been playing with blue nouns and red verbs.)

Nouns and verbs start to almost jump out at them as a result of playing the game. Additionally, they are much better at not confusing the assignment. For example, when the assignment was to underline the subject one and verb twice, I can’t tell you how many times my students used to underline the subjects twice and the verbs once. They say to me, “Well, I underlined them, what more do you want?”

When I have them use a colored pencil it takes that away and impresses on their brains which word is the noun (subject) and which is the verb. We even color code whole sentences according to the colors in The Sentence Zone, identifying the prepositional phrases or dependent and independent clauses.

I find that students who are just beginning to write sentences soon find that they can write more interesting sentences after playing the game because they start to make sentences that are worth more points. They often compete against themselves, keeping a running tally from turn to turn or day to day.

Also, when a student has a writing assignment and his sentences are all about the same length, I just have to say, “You need to have some small point sentences and some big point sentences to be a good writer. Remember, good writers vary the length and type of sentences they write.” They know what I’m talking about because they have seen small point sentences and big point sentences.

Students who are proficient with basic sentences start to learn more complex grammar nuances such as subject – verb agreement, or needing to compose a sentence with a direct object and an indirect object in it etc. In fact I also use it for SAT prep.

Hope this gives you some new ideas for teaching and improving sentence writing and grammar. Learn more about The Sentence Zone.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Parents and teachers alike need resources for children who are struggling in school. With today’s fast paced classrooms, many of our children are left behind because their learning difficulties have not been properly diagnosed. Often, children have to wait a long time to qualify for special education testing and by the time the child receives help, it is too late to turn around the feelings of failure. By using this LD dyslexia screening tool at the first signs of learning challenges, parents and teachers can provide effective intervention early on leading to more success for the child and less frustration for the parent or teacher.

Debra Em Wilson, Reading Specialist and author of S’cool Moves for Learning

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