Sentence Builder allows a child to produce written text on a screen from a pictorial, symbolic or text overlay. Unlike Early Reading and Pre-Reading Packs, this can only be used with a Star Microterminals Concept Keyboard attached - it is not an optional alternative.

Those teachers sold on the Breakthrough to Literacy approach to the teaching of reading and writing and those who liked the philosophy behind the approach but couldn't cope with organising all those little pieces of card, will welcome this package The Vocabulary Module allows the teacher to prepare a vocabulary file and an associated overlay (A3 or A4 depending on keyboard in use) to suit the needs of an individual or group of children, e.g. to link with the latest reading book. The file creation is a simple task thanks to the excellent use of the function keys. but it is advisable to draft out an overlay beforehand.

The screen displays a plan of the concept keyboard touch pads, the teacher - a mum with some typing experience will be a great help - types in the words and touches the area of the keyboard which is to be linked with the word, and the screen display indicates the pads allocated. All overlays must include a space, an erase key and a sentence terminator.

Teachers will find the facility to add new words to an existing vocabulary file a very useful option. One of the beauties of the concept keyboard system is that it is possible to develop different overlays for the same vocabulary using pictures, pictures and words or just words, thereby making the file suitable for a wide range of ability.

The Creating Sentences module permits children to build sentences on the screen using the words which have been prepared for them in the vocabulary module. Three sample vocabulary files and overlays are provided in the package. A sentence - up to two lines long is built up by touching individual words or pictures on the overlays.

Each overlay includes a delete area which allows the user to rub off words when errors are made, and a printer can be used to print out each sentence as it is created by the child. This keeps a record of each sentence as the screen only displays the previous sentence.

This is a very interesting package which helps to built and develop the concept of a sentence through a whole word approach. It has a very wide application, providing an ideal introduction to the first steps in written communication and will be invaluable to those children with special education needs, e.g. those with poor physical co-ordination who find difficulty with writing.

There is good use of colour for the screen display. but I wish they'd used double height lettering in place of the graphical forms to make up the individual words which appear on the top half of the screen as the keyboard pad is touched.

As the BBC is supposed to be "the" machine for schools, I'm surprised that no one has given thought to the use of appropriate letter forms - how often does one see a letter "a" in an early reading book?

Despite the last comments, this is definitely one of the best programs for use with the concept keyboard to-date, and is recommended.