Selecting online games to build literacy skills: Evaluating PBS’ Word Girl, Word World, and Super Why! Games

By: Katie McKay, EC-SEAT Project Scholar

In early education, literacy is one of the main goals with significant school instruction time spent on reading skills. Within reading instruction there are five domains: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. All areas work together to create a strong reader according to a study done by the National Reading Panel, which means all of these areas need to be practiced (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborne, 2006). Below you will find an explanation of each area.

Using PBS Kids online games to support early literacy

Parents and teachers alike who are looking for an easy way to engage their students in learning about reading often look to apps and websites.

Not all literacy and reading apps or online games are created equally however.

One source that is renowned for quality children's programming and resources is PBS Kids. The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication released a study finding that, “children’s early literacy skills demonstrate[d] significant and sustained growth associated with watching SUPER WHY!” one of the shows looked at in this article (Linebarger, McMenamin, & Wainwright, 2009). Children quickly fall in love with the characters in PBS shows and PBS uses this to their advantage to create learning opportunities for young children based on their original characters.

I have created an infographic that evaluates reading and literacy games from three popular PBS shows: Super Why!, Word Girl, and Word World. Super Why! is intended for children ages 3-6, Word Girl is aimed at children ages 4-9 and Word World is intended for children ages 3-5. I have included examples of online games and activities that target each reading domain from the three different programs. I have also included a short description of how some of the games target different reading skills and how they might be used in a classroom.

The infographic is color coded for the five domains of reading skills and corresponds to activity descriptions. Each colored hexagon includes the name of the specific game I recommend and the parenthesis stand for the particular show the game corresponds to (SW = Super Why!, WW = Word World, and WG = Word Girl).

For those kids who may not be super excited to open a workbook, these games offer an alternative way for children to practice these critical reading skills. Depending on what skill a child needs to work on, the teacher or parent can look for the domain's color and select a game from those listed. The infographic is not meant to be a definitive list of all the reading games PBS has to offer, but rather a starting point for anyone looking for particular reading instruction support games from a well-trusted source (PBS, 2011).

Blue: Comprehension - These games focus on a reader’s overall comprehension. In Storybook Adventure, readers must follow along with a story and choose words to fill in the blanks. This helps readers focus on how the selection of their word affects the meaning of the story. In Storybook Creator, readers must have an understanding of what the words mean so that when they change a word in the story, they know what the difference in overall meaning is. This game would be fun to play in class. It reminds me of Mad Libs and would be a fun way for students to practice understanding some of their favorite fairytales.


Purple: Phonemic Awareness - The two games from Super Why! focus on phonemic awareness which means they help children practice how letters sound. The games focus on one letter at a time so readers get a sense of what each letter sounds like. When the mouse hovers over a letter, the computer speaks the word for the child to hear. In Word World, the games are simplistic and focus on learners exploring uppercase and lowercase letters. In the classroom, these games would be great for early understanding of letters and their sounds. Teachers could pair students up and have them work together to complete games that focus on beginning letter sounds.


Red: Phonics - The Super Why! Games listed could be implemented into the classroom to get students to practice focusing on final sounds in words. Rhyming games are always fun so students could compete against one another to see who can complete the web games faster or with more accuracy, of course putting equal leveled learners with each other. The Word World games are more appropriate for early learners who can practice spelling simple words based on visual letter clues. Learners could use the bear skating game to practice letter shapes and how they form a word while also listening to the sounds each letter makes within the word.


Orange: Fluency - These games focus on reader fluency. In Rock ‘N Read Jukebox, readers sing along with a song as the lyrics scroll under the video. Readers must be able to decode the word and understand the way it sounds quickly in order to keep up with the song. This would be fun to implement in class because it’s almost like karaoke! Students could practice singing their favorite songs from the show while other students can read along and see what’s coming next.


Green: Vocabulary - On the Word Girl site there is an activity where children can choose pre-made words to put into a crystal ball to make a message. Students could use this game to learn about vocabulary and then e-mail the sentence they made to either a friend or the teacher, to check whether the student understood the vocabulary enough to make a logical sentence.


Works Cited:

• Armbruster, B. B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2006). “Put reading first: Kindergarten through grade 3.” Adler, C. R. (Ed.) (3rd ed.) National Institute for Literacy. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/prf_k-3/Documents/PRFbooklet.pdf. 
• Linebarger, D. L., McMenamin, K., & Wainwright, D. K. (2009). “Summative evaluation of Super Why!” Annenberg School for Communication: University of Pennsylvania. http://www.tc.pbskids.org/read/files/SuperWHY_Research_View.pdf. 
• PBS. (2011). “PBS is America’s largest classroom: Inspiring children to discover their full potential.” http://www.wfsu.org/education/pdfs/americas_classroom.pdf.