Language Adventures Quiz Game Show - Gr. 4-6 Educator Review

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Common Sense Review

Updated November 2013

Fun, Jeopardy-style game focuses on basic English skills

Common Sense Rating 3

Teacher Rating (2 Teacher Reviews) 4

Price

$1.99

This grade range is a recommendation by the Common Sense Education editorial team, not the developer/publisher.

Grades

4-6

Platforms

iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

Show Additional Product & Pricing Details

Subjects

English Language Arts

letter or word recognition
spelling
vocabulary
writing

Skills

Communication & Collaboration

teamwork

Critical Thinking

applying information
deduction
part-whole relationships

Purpose

Targeted Practice

Standards

Common Core State Standards

Choose from 11 different categories.
Players select point values from the grid to receive questions.
All questions are multiple choice.
Positive praise motivates teams.

Pros

The game features 11 categories and can be played with up to four different teams.

Cons

Questions cover basic knowledge, and teams must fight to be the first to answer questions, which is awkward on small devices.

Bottom Line

Language Adventures covers a large number of skills and categories but doesn't provide many higher-level learning opportunities for students.

Stacy Zeiger
Common Sense Reviewer
Homeschooling parent/instructor

Common Sense Rating 3

Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return? 4

Kids will enjoy the Jeopardy!-style game, cool narrator, and entertaining sound effects. The ability to play with up to four teams helps multiple kids get involved at once.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer? 3

Multiple-choice questions cover multiple subject areas, but some focus on memorized knowledge, not higher-order thinking skills.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students? 3

Kids have help getting started, and the app is generally intuitive to use, but it doesn't offer tutorials, practice sessions, or explanations for incorrect answers.

About our ratings and privacy evaluation.

How Can Teachers Use It?

The fact that Language Adventures Quiz Game Show doesn't promote higher-order thinking skills doesn't mean it has no use in the fourth- to sixth-grade classroom. It offers a good way for teachers to gauge what students know and also helps refresh their memories when it comes to preparing for a standardized exam. It's also fun for students to play, so using it as a time-filler or as a way to get students involved at the beginning of class could help them build confidence in their skills and review key bits of knowledge at the same time. It may also play a role in the ELL or low-literacy classrooma where students need to build some of that basic background ELA knowledge to help them understand more difficult concepts.

What's It Like?

Students can opt to play Language Adventures Quiz Show as a single team of one or with up to four teams of any number. After determining factors such as the number of teams, whether questions should be timed, or if they want to turn on audio narration on the question cards, students select categories. Each game features four categories chosen from a list of 11. Categories include forms of writing, reading comprehension, sentence structure, study & research, grammar & usage, and story elements. Once the categories are selected, the Jeopardy!-style game begins. The more multiple-choice questions a team answers correctly, the more points it earns. Hidden among the cards are double and triple bonus cards to give teams even more chances to pull ahead. The team with the highest point total at the end wins.

Is It Good For Learning?

At the fourth- to sixth-grade level, students should be focused on building their higher-order thinking skills and applying their knowledge to creative scenarios. In Language Adventures Quiz Game Show, they don't have that opportunity. Instead, the questions simply test whether students have a good base of ELA knowledge. While some categories, such as Study & Research, Reading Comprehension, and Story Elements offer a little more than just identification and recall, they still focus on simpler concepts, such as recognizing basic cause-and-effect scenarios or determining the plot of a short story. In the categories that require basic identification and recall skills, some questions are below grade level. For example, the parts of speech category has students identifying nouns and adjectives, which are typically covered in lower grade levels.

Teacher Reviews

Write Your Own Review

Language Adventures is an entertaining tool students can use for Language review.

Marla Kay D.
Forest Lake Education Center
Longwood, FL

4

June 17, 2014
Perfect Tool for Language Review

Ruth O.
Victory Elementary School
Portsmouth, VA

3

May 28, 2014

Lesson Plans

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Language
L.4: Conventions of Standard English
L.4.2	Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
L.4.4	Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 4 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
L.5: Conventions of Standard English
L.5.2	Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Vocabulary acquisition and Use
L.5.4	Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 5 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
L.6: Conventions of Standard English
L.6.2	Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
L.6.4	Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 6 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
Reading Literature
RL.4: Craft and Structure
RL.4.5	Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.
Key Ideas and Details
RL.4.2	Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.

RL.4.3	Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).
RL.5: Craft and Structure
RL.5.5	Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.
Key Ideas and Details
RL.5.2	Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
RL.6: Key Ideas and Details
RL.6.2	Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.

Language Adventures Quiz Game Show - Gr. 4-6

Pros

Cons

Bottom Line

Key Standards Supported

Language

Reading Literature

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