CPSC 4160 / Readaroo
Alyssa Jones
Game Description
Readaroo is an educational game that is designed to increase phonological awareness in emerging learners. It uses a combination of lessons, stories, and interactive activities. This allows students to be exposed to technical phonics concepts, see the concepts in practice through a story, and then put those concepts into practice themselves through the activities.
The objective of Readaroo is to complete each lesson and improve mastery of phonics concepts. Readaroo takes a linear approach to phonics instruction, beginning with short vowels and later progressing to concepts such as vowel teams.
Players must successfully complete each of the activities in the game in order to progress through lessons and unlock additional lessons. Players will use their knowledge of phonemes, which is taught prior to each activity, to successfully complete the tasks presented to them. These tasks include multiple choice questions, drag-and-drop questions, purely phoneme-based questions, and grapheme-to-phoneme questions.
Game Mechanics
Due to the intended audience of this game being young children, the mechanics are kept incredibly simple. All game mechanics are completed via clicks and drags, allowing for easy portability to touchscreen devices.
Users must click through lessons, interact with buttons via clicking, select letters, and drag-and-drop letters. These simple controls make the game accessible and allow young players to develop their fine motor skills regarding computers.
Technical Description
The methods employed in Readaroo are rooted in phonological pedagogy. Readaroo emphasizes phonological awareness, equipping users with the ability to sound out and decode words. While phonics sits at the core of Readaroo, users are also exposed to various sight words throughout their experience. The stories and lessons all have audio, allowing users to hear the unfamiliar words on their screen. Consistent exposure to common sight words, such as “the”, “they”, and “what” allows users to pick up on new vocabulary even when they lack the skills to decode those words. While the lessons feature highlighted words and letters, the stories intentionally exclude those features to encourage users to read each word rather than focusing only on the highlighted words.
The logic behind Readaroo is rather simple thanks to the simplicity of the mechanics. The lesson flashes through various images, an associated audio is read with the image, and then the activities begin. Readaroo is filled with audio queues and instructions to account for users who cannot read yet.
Controls
Readaroo is entirely controlled with a mouse. The controls were designed to be as accessible as possible. With the target audience beings children aged 3-8, many of them have not been exposed to computers outside of tablets and smart devices. This game allows them to develop their skills with a mouse and gain comfort with computers.
Game Limitations
Future Work
In the future, Readaroo will have significantly more lessons than it currently has. As previously mentioned, Readaroo will be ported to touchscreen devices in the future. The graphics could also stand to be upgraded in order to be more aesthetically pleasing and to better capture the attention of children.
Game objective
Game Screenshots
The fact that the only controls are click and dragging also means that Readaroo is incredibly portable to touchscreen devices.
In its current state, Readaroo faces numerous limitations. Firstly, it current has three lessons. There is no way to automate lesson creation, so hand creating each lesson and story is incredibly time consuming. Secondly, the simplistic nature of the game does not allow for learning at the same quality as in-person instruction by a teacher.. Teaching always requires a human touch, but Readaroo is a powerful supplemental tool.