Boardgame helps reading

As the holiday season moves into full swing, School of Management junior Athas Nikolakakos and his SMG Core team are working on an alternative to the Kinderbots and Tickle Me Elmos currently on the market.

Nikolakakos and his teammates, Megan Pappas, Christopher Corkery, Tara Tucker, David Chow and Kartik Rathore, are producing a series of educational board games called ‘Royal Reading Adventures,’ which he said are designed to help children bolster their reading skills in a fun, engaging way.

According to Nikolakakos, the games focus on a concept known as ‘phonemic awareness.’

Phonemic awareness is a strategy to help teach children to read. It works, Nikolakakos said, by teaching children the importance of the individual sounds within a particular word.

‘Before a child learns how to read, they need to understand that a name for something is arbitrary,’ Nikolakakos said. He offered the example of a child learning the word ‘trash,’ but not understanding the individual sounds or parts to it.

The ‘Royal Reading Adventures’ games break phonemic awareness skills into four levels.

‘A child in kindergarten can use it and go up to much more difficult sounds,’ Nikolakakos said.

Each game in the series is based on the theme of a royal family stranded on an island. Players must complete a phonemic awareness exercise before moving, Nikolakakos said.

According Nikolakakos, the group plans to market its product to three groups.

The largest of these is gift-buyers, including grandparents, aunts and uncles.

The group is also targeting their product toward parents buying the games for their children, ‘either for fun or specific help with phonemic awareness,’ he said.

Parents may also wish to purchase the game in order to reinforce concepts their children may already have learned, he said.

‘They want to have reinforcement outside the classroom – just like a parent would read to children or use flash cards,’ he said. ‘We added a much more fun element.’

Teachers make up the smallest target audience for the game, Nikolakakos said. He cited teachers’ roles as information sources to inform parents of the game. He said teachers might also wish to use the game in small reading groups, with disabled children or English as a Second Language programs.

The initial idea for this product came from a variety of sources within the group, according to Nikolakakos.

Members mentioned creating something for children, a gameboard, an educational product and a product involving reading. Nikolakakos said he called his mother, an educator, and asked for a suggestion for an educational product not currently on the market. She offered the idea of phonemic awareness – and ‘Royal Reading Adventures’ was born.

Phonemic awareness is a concept that is ‘huge in education,’ Nikolakakos said, and though there are some phonemic awareness products on the market for home use, there is ‘nothing really fun, nothing really marketed well,’ he said.

Nikolakakos said he had learned many lessons from the Core project.

‘In terms of business – communication is probably the biggest thing you learn,’ he said.

He cited the importance of keeping open lines of communication both within the group and as a marketing tool.

‘A lot of people brush off marketing and advertising as a fluffy science – it’s really not fluffy at all,’ Nikolakakos said. ‘It’s not about convincing [consumers] to get something they don’t want. It’s about finding people you think your product will really help.’

In terms specific to Core, he advised other students to ‘love your product.’

‘If you can find a product you love, it makes it easier; you’re more motivated to do it,’ he said. ‘That’s one of the reason why we chose [the product]. It’s the philanthropic aspect of teaching kids how to read, but it’s also a fun product.

‘If you’re doing something boring, like a toilet seat cover … you will drive yourself crazy,’ he said.