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What is the Best Type of Reading Instruction?

The International Dyslexia Association recommends Structured Literacy as an effective approach for teaching people—particularly those with a specific learning disability—how to read.

Structured literacy techniques are supported by research-based practices that are shown to be effective. Notably, these approaches involve explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. While not a quick fix, this approach has been found to build foundational literacy skills for anyone learning to read.

What Doesn’t Work in Reading Instruction?

In reading instruction, certain techniques are ineffective, particularly those focusing on visual aspects that do not address the underlying issues of reading difficulties.

According to the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), methods such as relying on the overall shape of a word to read are, “completely useless for promoting growth in reading.”

Additionally, The American Academy of Pediatrics has emphasized that visual problems are rarely responsible for reading difficulties, noting that eye exercises, vision therapy, or special tinted lenses lack scientific evidence for improving long-term educational performance in cases of dyslexia or similar conditions. Research consistently shows that reading disabilities are not caused by visual function issues, but rather by more complex neurocognitive factors. Therefore, techniques that attempt to alter visual representations of words are generally ineffective and should be avoided in favor of more evidence-based approaches to literacy instruction.

Most Ineffective Reading Education Apps (and Why You Should Avoid Them)

When choosing a phonics or reading app to help your students learn, it’s crucial to avoid ones that mainly rely on changing the visual presentation of words.

Instead, prioritize apps that are based on evidence-based approaches, such as the science of reading and synthetic phonics. This is essential to ensure that time and resources are used productively to genuinely help struggling children learn to read. This way, you instill necessary literacy concepts in your child gradually, making sure they receive the foundational skills and knowledge to grow into confident, capable readers.

That said, let’s highlight some of the most ineffective (albeit seemingly innovative) types of apps that don’t foster reading development—or worse, could negatively impact children’s literacy instruction.

1. Bionic Reading App

Bionic Reading is an example of an app that primarily focuses on changing the visual presentation of words. Bionic reading strategies claim to deliver a type of “reading aid” by bolding the first few letters of every word in a text. The Bionic Reading website claims that it “guides the eye over the text and the brain remembers previously learned words more quickly.”

This app relies on the myth that reading is primarily a visual task. Debunking this myth, extensive studies have not found visual strategies like Bionic reading to be effective. A small sample of people who tried reading with this method actually ended up reading more slowly than usual, finding the “unusual appearance” of the Bionic Reading format distracting.

2. BeeLine Reader

BeeLine Reader is a paid app and browser extension that can replace plain black font with an “eye-guiding color gradient.” The app claims that this service improves reading speed and ability for “all ages and skill levels” and that it’s particularly useful for people with dyslexia.

However, two reading experiments found that kids who read with this format actually had a slower reading pace compared to a plain black font. The experiments found that using the app hindered reading comprehension for third-grade readers. From a science of reading perspective, it would be best to avoid using this app, particularly for kids with learning disabilities, as changing the visual appearance of words in this way has not been shown to improve reading ability.

3. Dyslexia Fonts

Multiple apps focus on changing the font of a text to improve reading ability, particularly for people with dyslexia. OpenDyslexic and Open Dyslexic font Aa are apps that will convert digital reading materials to the ‘OpenDyslexic’ font. This font features letters that are thicker at the bottom. The app claims that people with dyslexia will be better able to read better with this font.

However, multiple studies have found that special “dyslexia fonts” do not help people with dyslexia—or anyone else—read better or faster. Given that “the font Dyslexic was not preferred by the children with dyslexia or by the children with normal reading development” (2017), there does not appear to be any reason to use apps that have this feature.

The Issue With Ineffective Reading Apps

Many ‘reading’ apps on the market can mislead well-intentioned educators and parents, often preying on their desperation to support a child who struggles with reading. Some of these apps promote techniques that lack research support and are ineffective. In some cases, these apps actually hinder reading abilities.

The real danger here lies in the potential for these unproven methods to not only fail to improve reading skills but to inevitably discourage learners from further practice. When ineffective strategies are used, children might begin to think of themselves as incompetent or “dumb” for not being able to grasp the concepts being presented. This can undermine a child’s self-esteem and confidence, making it even harder for them to believe in their ability to succeed. In reality, children may simply need the proper guidance and instruction that equip them to finally begin reading with confidence.

Overall, visual-based reading apps and techniques can detract from effective practices that actually do help people learn to read. It’s crucial to carefully evaluate apps and choose those that have practices backed by credible research to ensure that efforts to support literacy are both effective and encouraging.

How to Make Informed Decisions When Choosing a Literacy Program

A good rule of thumb in choosing a reading app is to avoid any program or technology that promises a quick fix by changing the visual appearance of words. This includes bolding certain letters, changing text color, or using specialized ‘dyslexia’ fonts.

To help you find reading apps and phonics programs that are effective and enjoyable for kids, Phonics.org has a library of informative articles and program reviews. Our goal is to support parents and teachers as they help kids learn to read through systematic, direct guidance. To discover proven apps for literacy instruction, explore the articles at phonics.org.

Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen App Review

Jaymi Thiessen on August 9, 2024

Cookie-Cutter Phonics Fun with Elmo and Cookie Monster

Are you looking for quality literacy apps for your child or student? The quality of educational apps can vary drastically. Check out our library of phonics reviews at phonics.org to see which literacy app is right for you.

Read on to see if the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen app is a good fit for you and your child!

What is Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen?

Sesame Street has become a learning staple for young children in many households since 1969, making it the longest-running children’s show in American TV history. The original intent of the show was to prepare disadvantaged children for school through television programming. Over the years, Sesame Street has evolved and developed its programs and characters.

The Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen app was released in 2015. This app builds on the Sesame Street legacy by continuing to encourage children to learn and grow. The app focuses on these key educational goals:

Letter Identification
Letter Sounds
Decoding (blending sounds to read words)
Vocabulary Building
Kindness and sharing

Overall, the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen aims to provide an engaging platform for young children to learn to read simple words.

Is Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen Easy to Use?

These factors influence the usability of the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen App.

Navigation

Navigating the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen app is simple and straightforward. Once the app is purchased, getting started is a breeze. The app offers an initial choice between making cookies with Chef Elmo or Chef Cookie Monster. Players can easily switch between these options at any time, making the experience both flexible and engaging.

A notable limitation, however, is the absence of user profiles. This would be a beneficial feature, allowing different players to personalize their learning experiences on one device.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen is designed to be intuitive and accessible, with directions that are easy for young children to understand. While the app does not offer an option to repeat directions on demand, they are repeated frequently while playing the game.

The app presents two main options for making cookies. Elmo’s game focuses on creating and decorating short vowel cookies (a, e, i, o, and u). Meanwhile, Cookie Monster’s game emphasizes building and reading phonetically simple words. Both modes are designed to be engaging and manageable for young learners, allowing them to play independently and gain confidence in their literacy learning.

App Settings

The settings in Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen are simple. Parents and teachers have the option to toggle on or off sound effects and character voices. However, the ability to turn off character voices is somewhat puzzling, given that the game relies heavily on the characters’ guidance to make the gameplay understandable and engaging.

Another notable limitation is the lack of customization options for selecting specific letters or word patterns to focus on. Adding this feature would allow for a more tailored learning experience.

How Engaging is Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen?

These factors influence learner engagement in the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen app.

Engaging Characters

Elmo and Cookie Monster play a significant role in making the app appealing to both children and adults. These beloved and well-known figures bring a sense of familiarity and warmth that enhances the overall experience. Their presence helps maintain players’ interest throughout the various literacy-building tasks.

Rewards

Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen keeps children engaged through its entertaining gameplay, making extra rewards unnecessary. The app includes a fun feature where kids can decorate alphabet cookies. Cookie decorating offers a creative outlet that adds to the enjoyment in the game. This focus on interactive play and creativity ensures that the experience remains rewarding and captivating without relying on external incentives.

Active and Passive Participation

Creative aspects of the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen app encourage active participation. For example, cookie decorating or choosing who to share the cookies with requires learners to actively make choices and interact with the app.

However, some of the more educational aspects of the app are more passive. For instance, children listen to Cookie Monster model how to sound out a word and share its meaning, but don’t actually need to try and sound out a word themselves. Adding more opportunities for children to actively practice sound blending would enhance this aspect of the app and provide a more engaging learning experience.

Literacy Learning With Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen

Does the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen app help children on their early literacy journeys? Let’s consider some of the instructional methods within the app.

Learning About Letters and Sounds

The letter sounds in the app are generally accurate. However, Cookie Monster’s deep monster voice may not be the ideal choice to introduce proper letter sound pronunciation to children.

The app focuses on using lowercase letters which is another clever choice as these letters are common. Elmo’s role in teaching short vowel sounds is also strategically important. Mastering short vowel sounds is a fundamental and challenging step in learning to read and spell.

However, the execution of Chef Elmo’s vowel lessons could be improved. Currently, when a child taps on a vowel cookie cutter, Elmo often provides the letter name and sometimes a word associated with the letter, but he does not articulate the letter sound itself. Direct and explicit instruction in letter sounds is highly recommended by literacy experts, and Elmo’s approach would benefit from more frequent and explicit pronunciation of the actual vowel sounds.

Letter formation or printing of letters is not a goal of the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen app. However, accurate printing could easily have been incorporated in the cookie decorating to build this skill.

*Direct instruction of short vowel sounds is missing in Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen*

Sequential Learning

Phonics experts often recommend teaching phonics skills in a specific, structured order to build a solid foundation. The app assumes that children are already familiar with consonant sounds. It does not seem to follow a particular sequence for introducing these sounds. A more clear progression of skills or options to choose the letter sounds and words practiced would be beneficial.

Phonemic Awareness

Chef Cookie Monster’s game involves placing an initial and final consonant cookie letter in a word and letting the player choose the vowel. Once the vowel is chosen, Cookie Monster says all of the sounds in the word, blends these sounds together, and states the word it represents.

Changing one letter at a time in word building instruction is called chaining. Chaining is an efficient method for building word-reading and spelling skills. This approach also demonstrates final blending, an important skill for decoding words. However, while the modeling is valuable, the learning experience would be enhanced if children were also encouraged to actively participate in blending the sounds themselves.

*Cookie Monster models how to sound out (decode) a word*

Phonics Instruction

Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen utilizes synthetic phonics, a method where individual sounds are combined to read and build words. This approach is supported by research as one of the most efficient ways to learn reading and spelling, making it an excellent choice for the app. By focusing on blending individual sounds together, the app helps children develop crucial phonics skills that are foundational for reading proficiency.

Vocabulary Development

Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen effectively supports vocabulary development through its creative gameplay. After children create dough letters, these are mixed in a bowl to form a new cookie that represents the meaning of a word. Chef Cookie Monster then uses this word in a sentence, which reinforces vocabulary learning and helps children understand new terms in context.

Additionally, the app occasionally allows learners to create “nonwords” with the chosen vowels. Cookie Monster appropriately sounds out these nonwords and explains that they aren’t real words, encouraging children to try again with choosing a different vowel.

*Building vocabulary by introducing novel words with images and context*

Is the Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen App Helpful for Kids?

Overall, Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen harnesses the well-known and widely-adored Elmo and Cookie Monster to capture the attention of young learners. The app is generally well-designed, organized, and engaging for young players. The app could benefit from some additional settings and features like the ability to choose which letters and types of words to focus on in the games.

This app is not intended to be a comprehensive literacy program. This app could be helpful for children who already know most of their letter sounds, including short vowels and need practice in blending simple sounds together to read words. The app does a good job of building vocabulary and modeling how to blend sounds together to read simple words. However, the app could improve with Elmo’s short vowel letter sound instruction and encourage more active participation in word reading.

If you’re looking for more expert reviews on reading apps, check out phonics.org where literacy experts share their honest opinions of today’s popular programs!

Sesame Street Alphabet Kitchen: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 3.5 / 5

Usability: 4 / 5

Engagement: 4 / 5

Mrs. Wordsmith: Readiculous App Review

Jaymi Thiessen on July 30, 2024

Looking for effective ways to boost literacy skills? Exploring reviews on phonics.org can provide valuable insights to enhance your child or student’s educational journey.

Continue reading this review to see more details of the Readiculous app.

What is Readiculous?

Readiculous is a literacy app developed by the brand Mrs. Wordsmith in conjunction with animator Craig Kellman. The app is intended for children ages 3-7 to learn foundational literacy skills.

The Readiculous app emphasizes the science of reading in its literacy instruction, ensuring a research-backed approach to learning. Each account supports up to four users, with a 7-day free trial period before transitioning to a paid subscription model. The app encourages daily engagement with recommended 10-minute sessions and offers an ad-free environment for uninterrupted learning.

Is Readiculous Easy to Use?

The following factors impact the ease of use in the Readiculous app.

Navigation and Gameplay

Readiculous offers user-friendly navigation and accessible gameplay designed to cater to young learners. Users can select between U.S. or U.K. accents for language options during the simple setup process. Three simple placement questions easily determine where a child should begin in the sequence of lessons.

*Readiculous uses simple placement questions for new players*

Each character featured in Readiculous has their own personalized map complete with unique background, music, and games. The characters follow straightforward paths easily followed by young players. This map provides a sense of progress and accomplishment for the players.

*Sequential lessons are completed step-by-step in the main area of Readiculous*

Accessibility

Readiculous prioritizes accessibility with games that are intuitively designed and easy for young players to learn. However, a notable limitation is the inability to repeat instructions within the games, which may frustrate some users who need clarification or miss the initial instructions. This aspect could be improved to enhance user experience and reduce frustration during gameplay.

Another accessibility concern is related to sound effects customization. While some sound effects can be disabled, not all can be muted. This can pose challenges for children with attention, focus, auditory processing issues, or hearing concerns, as they may find certain sounds distracting or overwhelming. Providing more comprehensive options to adjust or silence all sound effects would be useful.

Engagement in the Readiculous App

There are several factors that contribute to the engagement within the Readiculous app.

Visual Appeal

Readiculous excels in visual appeal, captivating young learners with its charming animations and adorable characters. Animator Craig Kellman designed the characters, who have a humorous and unique charm in the games. The characters have well-thought-out personalities and preferences which can further draw children deeper into the game. The music also adds to the engaging atmosphere, providing a lively backdrop to the learning experience.

Gameplay Rewards

Readiculous gives players a variety of engaging rewards that complement its educational focus without detracting from learning objectives. Children are celebrated with cheers, confetti, and verbal praise. Short videos that feature cute characters engaged in activities together also serve as motivational rewards.

Players can also earn coins, adding a tangible element to their achievements within the app. Readiculous has a nice balance of external rewards without taking away from the learning goals of the app.

Engagement With Games

Readiculous features a range of games that cater to young players. Some games may lack variety such as popping bubbles only to hear one reaction sound. Other games leverage texting interactions to enhance gameplay appeal.

The app contains mainly passive participation where children tap or observe the information. However, there are opportunities for more active engagement, such as accurately rebuilding words from scattered letters. Incorporating more activities that require active participation could further enhance the learning experience, providing opportunities for hands-on practice and reinforcing literacy skills in a dynamic way.

Learning to Read With Readiculous

These factors contribute to the quality of literacy learning within the Readiculous app.

Direct and Explicit Instruction

Readiculous uses direct and explicit instruction in letter learning, a method highly endorsed by reading experts for teaching children to read words effectively.

The app provides very clear descriptions of letter names in both upper and lower case, along with their associated sounds, demonstrating a good example of direct instruction. The instructions are clear, concise, and straight to the point, ensuring that young learners can grasp foundational reading skills with clarity and confidence. This approach supports a solid educational foundation and enhances the learning experience within the app.

Sequential Learning

Readiculous emphasizes sequential learning with a clear order of phonics skills, following a structured approach. This means that once children learn letter sounds, they practice blending these sounds to read words. Then, more sounds are introduced and as they practice reading. This methodical progression is beneficial for children’s literacy development, ensuring a systematic buildup of skills.

To enhance transparency and support for parents and teachers, it would be helpful if Readiculous shared the sequence of phonics skills more explicitly. This would allow caregivers to understand what their child has already learned and practiced, as well as what they will be learning next. Providing this information can facilitate better support at home and in educational settings.

Letter Names and Letter Sounds

The Readiculous app clearly and directly teaches children letter names and their represented sounds. The sounds are generally clear and accurate without the addition of a schwa sound.

Letter sound learning is taught using a Paired-Associate Learning technique where players tap the grapheme (letter) and the phoneme (speech sound) is repeated. This repetition is helpful for learning letter-sound associations, a foundation for learning to read.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the manipulation of speech sounds. These skills are essential for learning to read. In Readiculous, children begin blending letter sounds to form words soon after learning some letter-sound correspondences. This phoneme blending is an important phonemic awareness skill to master for early readers.

However, the app focuses on introducing final blending. This involves saying one sound after another and then blending them together at the end. It is easier to learn to blend sounds using continuous blending, which involves holding a sound and seamlessly blending it into the next without pausing. Incorporating this type of phoneme blending in Readiculous would make learning more accessible for more children.

Readiculous models phoneme blending by showing a word and having the player tap each letter in the word. As they tap, the sound of the letter is stated at the same time as a ‘ding!’ sound. Unfortunately, the ding sound inserted into the most important sound aspect of the game is problematic. The additional sound is not part of the word and is distracting. It is best to only have the sound of the letter in this type of instruction.

*This decoding activity is almost great, but is disrupted by ‘dings’ with the letter sounds*

Word Building

Once individual words are read, the letters scatter and the player needs to rebuild the word. Readiculous does a great job of connecting letters together that represent the same sound. For instance, the <oo> in ‘book’ are moved into place together as they represent one sound. The Elkonin boxes in the game effectively support word-building skills for children.

Practice with manipulating individual speech sounds to read and spell words is a part of synthetic phonics. The synthetic phonics approach in Readiculous has shown to be the most effective type of phonics for teaching children to read and spell.

Does the Readiculous App Work for Reading Instruction?

Overall, Readiculous has a ridiculously well-designed app that is easy to navigate and learn to use. Readiculous also excels in engagement with incredible animations and well-planned reward systems. Improvements could be made by increasing the active participation in some of the games or creating more variety such as in the letter-sound bubble game.

The quality of literacy instruction in Readiculous is good!. The app effectively uses recommended teaching approaches such as direct instruction and following a progressive sequence of phonics skills. The app also models important phonemic awareness skills such as phoneme blending.

This shows children how to sound out a word. Unfortunately, the app fumbles with the execution of this incredibly important aspect by adding a ‘ding!’ to the letters while children are trying to learn to carefully attend to the sounds. Including models of continuous blending would also better support instruction in this skill.

While the Readiculous app is not a comprehensive approach to all aspects of literacy learning, the app actually does a good job of teaching letter sounds, building phonemic awareness skills, and showing children how to decode single words. This is done in an easy-to-use and engaging way.

Want to read more reviews of learning apps? Check out the reviews at phonics.org where we share educational opinions on the popular programs today!

Readiculous App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 4 / 5

Usability: 4.5 / 5

Engagement: 4 / 5

Literacy Review of the Jolly Phonics Program

Jaymi Thiessen on July 22, 2024

Logical Literacy for New Readers

Curious about how the Jolly Phonics program compares to other literacy apps? Read more app reviews at phonics.org and find the best literacy app for your child.

What is Jolly Phonics?

Chris Jolly founded Jolly Phonics to help children learn to read. The app is intended for learners ages four and older with the guidance of literate adults. The program has been adopted in over 80 countries worldwide!

The Jolly Phonics app emphasizes literacy instruction in the areas of:

Letter Names
Letter Sounds
Letter Formation
Phonemic Awareness (phoneme isolation, blending, and segmenting)
Decoding (word-reading)
Encoding (spelling)

This specific app is not a comprehensive literacy program but does offer quality instruction of word reading for early readers. Read on to learn more details about this literacy app.

Is the Jolly Phonics App Easy to Use?

Jolly Phonics is generally well-organized and easy to use. In this section, let’s explore the app’s usability in detail.

Navigation and Organization

The Jolly Phonics app is well-organized and easy to navigate. The app organizes content into categories:

Home (literacy lessons)
Games
Songs
Assessments

While it’s generally easy for children and adults to find their way around the app, it is advisable to make sure songs are paused or stopped before navigating away from the ‘Songs’ category. This is because songs will continue in the background and overlap and interfere with other games and lessons.

Children should use the app under adult supervision to ensure they practice the appropriate content, as navigating to more challenging areas independently could lead to frustration.

Game Settings

The Jolly Phonics app has multiple adjustable settings. Users can select between British English and American English accents, as well as choose a preferred font.

There is a setting in ‘Games’ that can be played using ‘Select Sounds.’ This is a potentially great feature as the grown-up could set the app up to hone in on specific letters or sounds that a child needs to practice. Additionally, the guiding adult could align the games in the app to the order of letter sounds they are learning at school. Unfortunately, this setting only works for some of the games. However, the Segmenting and Reading games do not seem to consistently abide by these selections.

Phonics Screening Assessment

The Jolly Phonics app incorporates the Phonics Screening Check—a standardized assessment by the UK Government—which includes real and nonwords for children to read in isolation. Users can easily administer the test and record results within the app. This assessment provides an accurate way to evaluate word-reading skills, as it includes nonwords to gauge phonetic decoding abilities rather than just counting which common words a child has memorized.

For those new to phonics teaching, the assessment may not offer clear starting recommendations. However, the screener is helpful for pre-learning and progress tracking.

*Phonics Screening Results indicate the total words read in a specific time*

Engagement in the Jolly Phonics App

The following factors influence player engagement in the Jolly Phonics app.

Rewards

In the Jolly Phonics app, rewards are provided through positive verbal reinforcement within the games. Unlike many other apps, there are no collections of items or external rewards. This approach encourages intrinsic motivation where the reward is inherent in the learning process itself, enhancing focus and engagement without distractions.

Gameplay

Seven games are available in the Jolly Phonics app. These games are designed to be very easy and straightforward for young players. Clear, repeatable instructions accompany each game. The lessons are logically structured and consistent, which helps learners anticipate what to expect, although this predictability may become a little boring over time.

Stories and Songs

There are several aspects of the Jolly phonics lessons that are designed to improve retention of key concepts and engage young learners:

Story: a short story to illustrate the letter sound in the lesson
Action: a physical cue connected to the letter sound
Song: a short jingle to reinforce the letter sound

These lesson elements incorporate music, physical movement, and the imagination of new readers. All of these components are engaging and fun for younger children.

*Story and Action examples from the Jolly Phonics lessons*

Literacy Learning With Jolly Phonics

The Jolly Phonics app provides literacy instruction that follows many recommendations backed by research.

Consistent and Sequential Lesson Structure

The lessons in the Jolly Phonics app follow a structured format consisting of 9 steps:

1. Review previously learned letter-sounds

2. Story (comprehension)

3. Action (practice)

4. Flashcard (new letter-sound association)

5. Formation (printing)

6. Blending (putting sounds together to read new words)

7. Sounding (identifying new sounds in words)

8. Writing (spelling)

9. Song (singing and nursery rhymes)

The content in these lessons is valuable to learn and in a logical order. This consistency over all of the lessons makes it easier for adults to guide their new readers and for the learner to know what to expect and follow along appropriately.

It is widely recommended that phonics skills be taught sequentially, in a pre-planned logical sequence. Jolly Phonics does a great job of having a clear and logical order of phonics skills that are clearly shared with educators and parents.

Letter Recognition

Teaching new readers letters and their associated sounds is a crucial objective of the Jolly Phonics app. The app provides accurate, clear, and consistent instruction. While effective in teaching letter sounds, some songs include words that may seem unusual to young learners, such as <C> for ‘castanet’.

The letter formation practice in the app is also clear and easy to play. Children are shown how to create a letter and then practice the proper formation with their fingers on the app. It is logical to include letter formation practice with letter names and sound learning and is a great addition to the app.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness skills such as phoneme isolation, blending, and segmenting are fundamental for literacy development. Phoneme blending helps children decode words while segmenting assists in spelling them. The Jolly Phonics app integrates these skills into its lessons and games.

*Blending practice in the Jolly Phonics lessons*

Is Jolly Phonics Helpful for New Readers?

Short answer: Yes! Jolly Phonics offers easy navigation and well-organized lessons for students. While occasional app navigation glitches exist, they can be managed. The app also allows for customization based on the child’s accent, learning needs, and pace.

The app is also relatively engaging for younger children. Instead of distracting rewards and prizes, the app focuses on engaging details like physical actions and jingles. While the seven games are initially appealing, they may become repetitive over time. Also, a participating literate adult is necessary for a child to use this app to learn to read.

Finally, Jolly Phonics incorporates essential components of literacy programs, including sequential, synthetic phonics, letter learning, and phonemic awareness skills. However, it currently lacks practice with reading phrases or sentences for fluency and comprehension development. Jolly Phonics would be a good app to pair with a comprehensive literacy program.

Compare other phonics reviews at Phonics.org, where literacy experts share their honest opinions and ratings of some of the latest literacy apps on the market today.

Jolly Phonics: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 4 / 5

Usability: 4 / 5

Engagement: 4.5 / 5

ABC Ride Review

Jaymi Thiessen on July 13, 2024

Pedaling Through the ABCs

Make screen time count with quality literacy apps! Read about which apps are actually worth your time and money with reviews at phonics.org.

In this review, we take a look at the ABC Ride app and its features.

What is ABC Ride?

In this fun learning app, students join Beck and Bo on a bicycle ride with ABC Ride by Avokiddo. As Beck and Bo ride a bike through the game, they make stops to practice learning a new letter name or letter sound. This app is designed for children from ages 3-7 to support literacy learning. ABC Ride is not a comprehensive reading program. Rather, the app focuses on practice with letter names and letter sounds with short engaging activities for new readers.

Is ABC Ride Easy to Use?

Overall, ABC Ride is fairly easy to set up and play. Refer to these recommended settings to get the most out of the app.

Navigation and Gameplay

The user navigation in ABC Ride is straightforward and accessible, requiring no login or sign-ups to get started. It’s designed to be intuitive, making it easy for young children to understand and enjoy. Users have direct control over animated characters and their bicycle movements, allowing them to participate in interactive games.

The app, however, lacks an option for children to repeat instructions when needed, which would be a helpful feature. Overall, the app’s user-friendly and straightforward setup enhances the ease of play.

Game Settings

Several settings in ABC Ride can be adjusted based on a child’s learning needs or parental preferences. The option to easily adjust these settings enhances the usability of the app. This customization feature is a plus.

Here are some recommendations for setting up the app to optimize your child’s experience.

Letter Type: Adults can choose between practice with uppercase and lowercase letters. If your child is just getting started with learning letters, choose the lowercase option, as these are more commonly used and seen in kids’ books.
Letter Sound: Select “Phonic” for letter sounds unless your child is already proficient in letter sound knowledge, in which case choose “Name”.
English Spelling: There is a choice between American and British spelling. However, changing the spelling preference does not change the accent in the app, so this app isn’t really appropriate for children with British English accents anyway.
Narration Hints: Keep this setting on for additional guidance during gameplay.
Word Spelling and Shuffle Dropped Letters: Choose settings based on your child’s preference; this aspect of the game has little impact on literacy learning.
Background Music: Turn this off if your child doesn’t enjoy the music, experiences auditory processing issues, or has difficulties with focus and attention.

Is the ABC Ride App Fun to Play?

New readers will likely find ABC Ride an enjoyable and engaging playing experience for a short time.

Rewards

Rewards in the ABC Ride app include cheering and positive feedback from the narrator such as, “That’s excellent!” or “Awesome!”. Players can also collect stars while ‘riding’ their bicycle. While the stars don’t do anything else in the app, they’re fun to collect and they don’t distract from learning.

Gameplay

Letter activities in the ABC Ride app are intuitive and straightforward to play. They’re well-designed and developmentally appropriate for the intended young audience. The games are engaging yet not too lengthy. The activities are consistent which is great for building kids’ confidence—they know what to expect and how to navigate the app. However, over time, repetitive gameplay may lose some children’s interest.

Appearance

The ABC Ride app features a simple, clear design with cute and visually appealing elements. It includes charming sound effects and music that enhance the player’s experience. While the animated characters are cute, adding more diverse character options would enrich the app’s appeal and inclusivity.

*Beck and Bo are the characters in ABC Ride*

Literacy Learning With ABC Ride

Let’s look more closely at the literacy components in the ABC Ride app.

Sequential Learning

Literacy experts recommend teaching with a planned and intentional sequence of letter-sound correspondences. For example, it makes sense to teach the letter sounds for the letter <M> before the letter <R> as it is easier to pronounce and is a commonly used letter.

ABC Ride has three options for the order of letter sound instruction:

Alphabetical Order
Random Order
Specific Letter Choice

This presentation of choices is a great feature of the app. Ideally, a grown-up who guides their child in this app would have a scope and sequence of letter sounds to follow. Unfortunately, the app won’t let adults choose the order of all the letters. They can only choose one at a time. While the default options—alphabetical and random—are adequate, allowing for more tailored letter-learning sequences would further enhance the app’s educational value.

*Alphabet learning options for ABC Ride*

Letter Learning

Learning letter names and sounds is foundational to learning to read and spell. The focus of developing these skills is a valuable goal for ABC Ride. Letter sounds are introduced using an American English accent in a clear and mostly accurate way. The letter sounds for /f/ and /h/ are slightly inaccurate with an additional schwa sound added on.

The app begins each letter introduction with a “sound story,” a brief narrative that incorporates words starting with the same sound. These alliterative sound stories enhance phonemic awareness skills. While there is some direct instruction, there could be more explicit direction in this area.

One area where the app could improve is incorporating letter formation alongside letter names and sounds, a straightforward enhancement that would benefit children’s learning experience.

Spelling

Each alphabet activity starts with a sound story, a bit of practice with a keyword associated with that letter sound, and ends with a ‘word spelling’ activity. In this activity, a keyword for the letter sound is presented and then the letters that make up this word fall down. The player’s job is to recreate the word by matching the fallen letters with the remaining outline of the letter. When the player taps a letter to put it back in its spot, the letter sound is repeated.

This spelling activity falls short of the intended purpose for a few reasons. First, the chosen keywords are phonetically random. Usually, children learn to read and spell CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words like ‘cat’ or ‘tap’ before more phonetically complex words. Instead of choosing a word like “kid” for the letter <K> the word ‘kangaroo’ is used. This is a tricky word to spell for beginning learners!

*Phonetically challenging words are chosen for new learners to ‘spell’*

The additional concern with the word spelling activity is that the letter sounds do not match the key word. For example, ‘kangaroo’ ends with the /oo/ sound. Ideally, children would tap and drag the two <o> letters as one unit and hear the sound /oo/. Instead, the letters are meant to be dragged individually and each make the short /o/ sound like the first sound in ‘octopus’. This disconnect between letter sounds and word pronunciation undermines the effectiveness of the spelling exercise.

Parents can choose whether to keep this activity in the game or not. The game could be potentially kept as a letter matching exercise, but there is a good chance it would confuse new spellers with the inconsistent letter sounds being used.

Is ABC Ride a Good Literacy App?

ABC Ride excels in usability and engagement of new readers. Getting started with the app is seamless and the settings can be adjusted to suit different learning needs. The audio and visual components of the app are engaging and cute for young children and the games are easily playable with a reasonable amount of positive reinforcement. Overall, the app is simple and straightforward even for younger players.

The literacy goals of letter sound learning in the app are important for building a literacy foundation for children. The letter names and sounds are generally clear and accurate, and the practice activities are developmentally appropriate.

Finally, while the options to alter the order of letter learning are available, they could be enhanced by setting up all letters in a preferred sequence. Adding letter formation practice would also add to the literacy skills available in the app. Finally, there are multiple concerns with the ‘word spelling’ activity. Fortunately, this part of the game can be turned off in the adjustable settings.

Want more reviews of fun literacy apps? Check out the phonics.org page where we share expert observations of the most popular learning games!

ABC Ride App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 3 / 5

Usability: 4 / 5

Engagement: 4 / 5

Flocabulary Review: A Fun, Musical Literacy App

Jaymi Thiessen on July 5, 2024

Captivating Raps Fill Vocabulary Gaps

Curious about what experts truly think about online learning platforms? See this review of Flocabulary and more at phonics.org.

What is Flocabulary?

Flocabulary is a Brooklyn-based educational website that has been operating since 2004. This site integrates educational content, hip-hop songs, and videos to build vocabulary, increase knowledge in American history, English, math, and science. Tens of thousands of schools have tried Flocabulary. The goal of Flocabulary isn’t to teach basic reading skills but to develop and improve content- area knowledge and overall vocabulary.

Keep reading for a breakdown of what Flocabulary has to offer in terms of ease of use, engagement, and quality of literacy education. This review focuses on the literacy components of the Flocabulary website.

Is Flocabulary Easy to Use?

Flocabulary’s website design and organization are intuitive and easy to learn for educators and students.

Website Organization

Flocabulary offers a deep selection of online lessons with a variety of topics. Fortunately, lessons are easy to find and well- organized. They are systematically categorized by:

Main idea/topic
Subject area
Grade level
Curriculum outcomes

Lessons can be ‘favorited’ by teachers for quick access. Additionally, a user-friendly search bar facilitates quick access to specific resources, enhancing overall usability and organization.

Lesson Sequence

The website’s organized lesson sequence ensures predictability and ease of use for teachers and students. This consistency is a part of effective learning routines.

All lessons have the same sequence of activities:

Video: Provides direct instruction through music videos with engaging visuals.
Vocab Cards: Interactive cards with clear images and definitions representing key vocabulary from the video.
Vocab Game: Interactive maze activity reinforcing vocabulary through sentence completion.
Read & Respond: Multiple-choice questions to build comprehension.
Quiz: Additional multiple-choice questions to assess comprehension.
Lyric Lab: Creative activity where students write rap lyrics using learned vocabulary, supported by a rhyme generator and choice of beats.

Educators and students are not obligated to go through each section of the lesson. They can choose which parts of the lesson they engage with. Each part of the lesson is consistent, straightforward, and easy to understand.

How Engaging is Flocabulary?

These features contribute to user engagement and student experience while using Flocabulary.

Videos

The videos offer a fun and creative approach to direct instruction that engages students of all ages (and adults too). The topics of the videos are interesting and contain practical and useful knowledge. The videos feature catchy beats and lyrics, accompanied by beautiful and powerful visuals created by a team of artists.

There is also an option for educators to switch on discussion questions. The videos will intermittently pause and ask a discussion question. This encourages oral communication, collaboration amongst peers, and deepens understanding of important concepts. All of these aspects contribute to an engaging approach to learning.

*A ‘Discuss’ option can be toggled on to encourage communication between peers on content area topics*

Practice Methods

Flocabulary has multiple methods where students can practice their new learning and apply it actively and engagingly. For example, vocabulary games and writing lyrics allow students to actively participate in new learning in a creative way. A research study on Flocabulary states that “97% of educators are able to engage the ‘most challenging to engage students’ when using Flocabulary.”

*Games are enhanced with musical elements as students engage in answering questions*

Accessibility

Flocabulary is not designed as a primary tool for teaching children to read. However, it includes accessibility features such as Immersive Reader, which can be switched on within the site. This technology supports students with varying reading abilities by providing speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities. It’s especially beneficial for students who are learning to read or have learning disabilities, enabling them to access content despite reading challenges.

The speed of the video can also be controlled by the student. This allows students who need a slower introduction to new concepts to adapt the presentation of learning material to suit their specific learning needs.

Literacy Learning With Flocabulary

Does Flocabulary offer quality educational resources? Let’s discuss!

Direct Instruction

Direct instruction is recommended for effective literacy instruction, and Flocabulary incorporates this approach in a highly engaging manner through its videos. Much of the content in the videos effectively supports literacy outcomes, particularly in the area of comprehension.

Currently, the purpose of Flocabulary doesn’t include word reading or phonics instruction. This platform would be well- suited to this type of instruction and enhancing Flocabulary in this way could contribute to the world of early reading instruction. For example, a video on how to sound out a word or how to spell simple words would be helpful and likely effective in the learning format in Flocabulary. Currently, Flocabulary’s endorsement of balanced literacy—a method criticized for its ineffectiveness in teaching reading—may not fully optimize its potential for literacy instruction.

Vocabulary Development

The Simple View of Reading contains two important aspects that contribute to reading comprehension: decoding (word-reading) and language comprehension. Knowing the meaning of words is an incredibly important aspect of language comprehension that closely connects to reading comprehension. The hip-hop genre can represent a large variety and creative usage of words. By combining hip-hop and vocabulary instruction, Flocabulary makes a clever, logical, and fun connection between music and learning.

*Vocab Cards reinforce the meanings of important vocabulary words in the videos and songs*

When describing this synthesis, Flocabulary states: “Since the beginning, rapping has been educational by nature. When an MC grabs the microphone, it’s their chance to share knowledge and analyze experiences, or simply get creative with words. This is why the genre is such a powerful tool in the classroom.”

Through this, it’s easy to see how Flocabulary’s approach would support vocabulary building for students.

Writing in the Lyric Lab

The Lyric Lab is the last step in every lesson on Flocabulary. The Lyric Lab provides an engaging and enjoyable way for students to apply new learning and develop their writing skills. The activity is designed with scaffolding that supports learners’ progression. The rhyme generator button assists in creating rhymes for the last word of each line and is a nice touch for this part of the website. Additionally, there’s a feature prompting students to incorporate specific vocabulary words into their lyrics, with the website tracking their usage. A wide selection of beats allows students to enhance their lyrics; which brings their writing to life.

*The Lyric Lab provides scaffolded support on an engaging platform for students to write about content area topics*

Background and Content Area Knowledge

Flocabulary includes a current events category featuring “The Week in Rap” for grades 6-12 and “The Week in Rap Junior” for grades 3-5. These videos succinctly summarize American news and current events each week, which is an interesting addition to the platform. The weekly videos provide a quick and entertaining method for students to build background and general knowledge about the world, which enhances reading comprehension skills.

Is Flocabulary a Good Learning Tool for Students?

Flocabulary is a well-designed educational website that uses hip-hop music and engaging visuals to enhance vocabulary and content knowledge in various subjects. Its intuitive organization and lesson sequence make it easy for both educators and students to use. The platform’s videos, interactive vocabulary activities, and creative Lyric Lab contribute to an engaging and effective learning experience.

While Flocabulary excels in vocabulary development and comprehension, it isn’t intended to teach basic reading skills. However, it would be interesting to see the site implement this area of learning! Despite its room for improvement, Flocabulary’s unique approach successfully supports student engagement and learning across multiple disciplines.

Discover more educational reviews on Phonics.org and explore more literacy learning apps!

Flocabulary App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 4 / 5

Usability: 5 / 5

Engagement: 5 / 5

Poio App Review

Jaymi Thiessen on June 28, 2024

Fun and Engaging App Doesn’t Deliver on Reading Instruction

Not sure which literacy apps to use with your children or students? Read the reviews at phonics.org to learn which ones to try—and which ones to avoid.

Read on for an in-depth look at the Poio app for literacy instruction.

What is the Poio App?

Poio is a literacy app that introduces young learners (ages 3-8) to the world of reading through adorable letter bug characters known as ‘Readlings’. The Readlings enter and exit short levels through straws, and complete levels by collecting letter sounds and words for their storybook.

The goal of the game is to complete the entire Poio storybook by collecting and rebuilding each word in the fairytale. The CEO and founder of Poio, Daniel Senn, founded the Scandinavia-based company to help his own son learn to read. Poio claims that kids can teach themselves to read by playing with their literacy app.

Is the Poio App Easy to Use?

Which factors contribute to the ease of use of the Poio app? There are a few things you might want to know.

User Controls

In Poio, navigating through levels is easy as you navigate the island maps on the home page. Playing through the Readling characters is similarly a breeze with simple and intuitive touch controls. Even for young children, the game’s mechanics are intuitive and easy to grasp.

Parent Section

Signing up for the game and adding children to play is also a hassle-free process. Accessing the parent section is straightforward, requiring only the entry of the birth year. Notably, the parent section doesn’t include an option to share the skills of the new reader or choose a place to begin learning and playing. This would be a welcomed feature in future app updates.

User Engagement in Poio

These elements impact the overall engagement of the Poio app, for both parents and children.

Rewards

Poio inundates players with many options for external rewards, ranging from coins, crystals, trophies, and stars—as well as special letters, digital books, pages, presents, cages, confetti, and cheering.

While some rewards like coins and crystals are provided as in-app currency to purchase items for the Readlings home, the sheer abundance of rewards in this app can be overwhelming and distracting. The excessive variety of rewards detracts from the app’s core learning focus and may disrupt the learning experience for young users.

*Many external rewards are available in the Poio app*

Gameplay

Poio’s gameplay is a delightful blend of fun and learning. As the adorable Readling characters traverse from one ‘straw’ to the next, players guide them to collect letters, words, and rewards strewn along the way. The game incorporates clever letter association games, such as unlocking locks to free trapped Readlings.

Visually, the app is a treat! With beautiful aesthetics and clean animations that captivate and invite exploration, Poio offers an enchanting gameplay experience.

*Users practice matching the sound (key) to the lock (letter) in a clever method of practicing letter sounds*

Passive Participation

In Poio, active participation in literacy activities appears somewhat limited. While children are encouraged to guide the characters to collect letters and words, they aren’t prompted to actively engage in sound recall or phoneme blending—both of which are crucial aspects of literacy development.

Instead, children observe the sounds produced for them in the app and observe sound blending without being directly involved in the process. The emphasis on dragging characters to collect items may overshadow opportunities for children to actively participate in literacy tasks, which are important for developing literacy skills.

Literacy Learning With Poio

The following factors contribute to the quality of the ‘learning elements’ in the Poio app.

Direct and Explicit Instruction

Unlike the direct and explicit instruction method advocated by reading organizations and research, Poio takes a different approach by employing experiential and immersive learning techniques. While this approach may suit some children, it will not be effective for everyone.

Sequential Learning

Poio uses an immersive learning experience that may pose challenges for some children. The app introduces difficult words (including rarely-used phonics patterns and multisyllabic words) from the start. It presents these words without a gradual buildup of complexity.

Instead of a step-by-step progression, all sounds are presented at all once:

Short vowels
Long vowels
Diphthongs
Digraphs
Vowel teams

This overwhelming approach can strain kids’ working memory and may not suit new readers. Furthermore, the absence of a defined scope and sequence means that the app lacks a clear progression from simple to more complex words. The result is a phonetically random, confusing learning experience.

Letter Sounds

Poio’s approach to teaching letter sounds lacks clarity and consistency. While the app initially focuses on short vowel sounds, the associated practice words deviate from this pattern. For example, it introduces the word ‘troll’ after teaching the short ‘o’ sound.

The visual design of the letters in-app can also be confusing. When the characters touch letters, they can move and roll around. This, for example, can make it unclear if the letter is a /u/ or an /n/. Additionally, the font style has a lowercase <i> and uppercase <I> that look exactly the same, lacking a distinction between the two. These features can make learning some letter-sound correspondences more challenging for children.

*Letters aren’t always clearly represented in the Poio app – uppercase <E> has been pushed over and looks like an <m>*

Finally, letter sounds are sometimes unclear in the Poio app. The sounds for /l/ and /f/ are not entirely accurate. Plus, the ‘underwater’ letter sounds are even less clear.

The Poio app also has many sounds happening at the same time. For example, background music, effect sounds, character noises, and ‘munching’ noises occur at the same time while a letter sound is stated. Differentiating between all of these sounds is distracting and not ideal for early readers.

Phonemic Awareness

In Poio, phonemic awareness development seems to receive some attention through blending and segmenting practice during spelling sessions. Although children are not actively engaged in these tasks themselves, they have the opportunity to listen to the models provided, which can still contribute positively to their phonemic awareness skills.

While this level of engagement may not be as robust as interactive exercises where children actively blend and segment sounds, it nonetheless provides a foundational exposure to these essential skills. It’s better than no exposure at all.

*Word building in the Poio app supports phonemic awareness (blending and segmenting skills)*

The Fairytale Book

In Poio, the approach to the fairy tale book may not align with best practices in literacy instruction. Ideally, the books provided to new readers would be decodable. A decodable book matches the pre-taught letter sounds and phonics patterns to the text so children can decode (sound out) words and practice reading.

However, Poio uses a leveled text approach where the text features random phonics patterns. There is controversy and limited evidence for the effectiveness of leveled texts in early literacy development. Therefore, while the fairytale book in Poio may provide an enjoyable reading experience, it may not fully support the development of phonemic awareness and decoding skills that young readers need.

*The word choice in Poio is based on a book, not the word-reading ability of the new reader*

Letter Formation

Poio incorporates a charming approach to letter formation practice by unlocking locks with correct letter formations, which is a fun and interesting concept. This interactive activity provides an engaging way for children to practice forming letters correctly, adding an element of fun to the learning process. The mechanics of this feature are user-friendly, making it easy for children to participate and benefit from the practice.

Can Kids Teach Themselves to Read With the Poio App?

It’s unlikely that all children will be able to teach themselves to read with the Poio App.

The Poio app offers an engaging and visually appealing approach to literacy learning. Its user-friendly interface and charming characters make it accessible for young learners and their parents.

However, despite the entertaining gameplay, Poio falls short of delivering effective literacy instruction. The app lacks clarity and consistency in teaching letter sounds and phonics patterns.

Furthermore, the absence of a structured scope and sequence of skills and the use of a leveled text approach are not ideal for learning to read in English. Finally, while the app incorporates some phonemic awareness activities, its passive approach to teaching does not fully engage children in learning to spell and read words.

While the Poio app is easy to use and enjoyable to play, there’s room for improvement—especially regarding the overall quality of literacy instruction it provides.

Poio is one of many reading apps available today. Read about more effective phonics instruction programs and fun literacy apps for kids on the Phonics.org reviews page!

Poio App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 2 / 5

Usability: 4 / 5

Engagement: 3 / 5

Blending Board App Review

Jaymi Thiessen on June 21, 2024

A Decoding Practice App With Potential

Take a closer look at literacy learning apps with expert reviews by phonics.org. Keep reading to learn more about this week’s featured app: Blending Board.

What is the Blending Board App?

Blending Board is an innovative educational app designed to offer free dyslexia resources as part of Nadine Gilkison’s Google Innovator project.

Unlike a standalone gaming app, Blending Board serves as a tool for teaching reading through phoneme blending exercises. It is intended for use by educators who organize these exercises using ‘decks,’ which are collections of letter combinations that can be modified to help new readers practice sounding out words and nonwords.

Pre-created decks can be conveniently shared via QR code. Importantly, Blending Board itself does not teach letter sounds or blending; rather, it functions as a supportive tool for educators. It’s not an independent game.

How to Use the Blending Board App

Overall, the Blending Board app is easy to use but is missing some key features. Keep reading to see a more detailed look at the usability of the app.

Navigation

The Blending Board app home page is set up with six initial options:

Create Deck: customize a new set of phonics patterns to practice
Bl: takes you to a pre-created, standard deck
My Decks: access to previously-created decks
Mission: goal and purpose of the app
Settings: customizable color options
QR code reader: access other pre-made decks

The interface is fairly easy to navigate and intuitive to set up. A home screen button in the bottom left corner always brings the user back to the main menu. This design ensures that educators can efficiently manage and utilize the app’s resources.

Accessibility

Blending Board is a free app accessible to all, created specifically to support individuals with dyslexia but beneficial for anyone learning to read words (decode). This app has customizable decks that can cater to individual needs. The app’s neutral appearance ensures it can be effectively used with both young children and adults.

Editing Decks

Editing Decks on the Blending Board app comes with some limitations. Users cannot edit or delete just one deck. If there is a mistake, they must start fresh and create a new deck. Additionally, deleting a deck will result in all decks being deleted, which requires users to recreate any necessary decks from scratch.

Glitches

Blending Board has a few glitches that can affect usability. Sometimes, even when certain graphemes are unselected, they may still appear in the deck. Additionally, there are setup configurations where words cannot be properly formed, such as when the “short vowel pointers” option appears in the middle of a word. These issues can disrupt the intended learning experience and require users to be cautious when creating their decks.

User Engagement in the Blending Board App

These elements enhance the overall engagement when interacting with the Blending Board App.

Neutral Appearance

Blending Board’s neutral appearance ensures it is suitable for learners of any age without appearing babyish to older users. The design is practical and free of distractions, allowing educators and learners to focus on teaching phoneme blending effectively.

A Tool, Not a Game

Blending Board is a tool, not a game. In order to be effective, it requires teacher instruction, modeling, and pre-teaching. The app’s effectiveness and student engagement depend largely on the teacher leading the lessons.

Literacy Learning With the Blending Board App

How does the Blending Board app measure up when it comes to helping someone learn to read?

Important Purpose

Phoneme blending—pushing speech sounds together to read words—is a crucial skill for literacy. Teaching these skills in a specific order (scope and sequence) is also vital for effective learning. The Blending Board app supports both of these aspects, allowing educators to determine the order of phonics skills. However, it is important to note that the app is not designed to include other essential aspects of literacy instruction, such as letter-sound correspondences, comprehension, and vocabulary.

Elkonin Boxes

Elkonin boxes, also known as sound boxes, are a common and effective tool in literacy learning. They help learners segment words into individual sounds, with each box representing one sound. For example, the word “fish” would be divided into three boxes: /f/, /i/, and /sh/.

While the Blending Board app includes similar boxes, they do not always correlate accurately to the sounds. For instance, blends are often placed in one box instead of being separated into two, which can lead to confusion and reduce the effectiveness of this instructional strategy.

Chaining

The Blending Board app offers two options for modifying words. Users can change all letters around, creating a more challenging exercise, or they can tap on a specific grapheme (letter) to change just that one sound. Changing just one sound at a time is called “chaining.” For instance, the word ‘pat’ could be changed to ‘pit’ by tapping the middle letter.

Chaining serves as a helpful scaffold for new readers, reducing the demand on working memory by changing only one sound at a time. This makes it easier for learners to practice reading and spelling, highlighting a good aspect of the app.

Tips for Parents and Educators

To maximize the benefits of the Blending Board app in literacy instruction, follow these guidelines:

1. Scope and Sequence: Choose and use a scope and sequence for teaching phonics skills and create the ‘decks’ in the app according to this order. This structured approach ensures that skills are introduced and practiced in a logical progression.

2. Pre-Teaching: The Blending Board app is a practice tool. Direct, explicit instruction should still come before learners use the app to practice. Educators should introduce phonics skills before students use the app for reinforcement.

3. Discussing Meaning: Engage students in conversations about the words they read. Use the words in sentences to provide context and enhance understanding. The app can generate both real and nonsense words, so it’s important to discuss whether a word is ‘real’ or ‘nonsense.’ For real words, explore their possible meanings with the learners.

4. Parental Involvement: Parents should communicate with their child’s educator to understand which sounds and types of words their child is learning. This allows them to align the Blending Board practice with classroom instruction, ensuring consistency and reinforcement at home.

By following these steps, educators and parents can effectively use the Blending Board app to support literacy development.

How Does the Blending Board App Support Early Readers?

The Blending Board app is relatively easy to use and navigate, making it accessible for educators and learners alike. However, its functionality could be improved with better editing options for the decks, such as the ability to delete one deck at a time or edit a deck after it has been created.

With its neutral appearance, the app is suitable for learners of all ages. While it can be a valuable tool, it should not be used in isolation but rather in conjunction with effective, research-based teaching practices.

The Blending Board app is a supportive tool rather than a standalone learning format. Its primary purpose is to help with decoding real and nonsense words. It doesn’t cover multiple areas of literacy learning.

The app effectively incorporates chaining, which is beneficial for new readers. However, it could be further enhanced by aligning its boxes with the practices used in Elkonin boxes.

Overall, the Blending Board app is a useful resource for phoneme blending exercises but should be integrated into a comprehensive literacy instruction program.

Read more Phonics.org reviews and explore more literacy learning apps today!

The Blending Board App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 3/ 5

Usability: 3/ 5

Engagement: 3/ 5

Phonics Hero Review

Jaymi Thiessen on June 14, 2024

Literacy experts at Phonics.org explore different phonics and reading programs for kids. By sharing honest reviews, we hope you can make more informed choices about the educational tools you use with your beginner readers!

In this article, we share our Phonics Hero review and discuss the pros and cons of its approach to literacy instruction. Let’s dive in!

About the Phonics Hero App

Phonics Hero is an engaging literacy program designed for children ages 4 to 7. It offers instructional exercises for:

Letter sounds
Word reading
Sentence reading
Spelling skills
Vocabulary

Phonics Hero also provides valuable resources for parents and teachers. Examples include printable worksheets and a classroom dashboard for educators to track students’ progress and assign specific activities.

Read on to learn more about the quality of different components in the Phonics Hero program.

Getting Started With Phonics Hero

How does it work? Is it effective for kids? Let’s look at the usability and user interface of the Phonics Hero program.

Signing Up

The sign-up process is straightforward and easy for parents and teachers. Teachers have the option to select the preferred accent used in the app: English, American, or Australian. As learning to read and spell is sound-based, it is important to have the option to train students in their home dialect.

Logging In

The log-in process is also straightforward for a single child at home. However, the app presents log-in challenges in a classroom setting. Each child receives a unique username and password, unlike other apps that offer simpler methods like choosing a nickname or using picture passwords. This can be tricky for younger children in a classroom as they may require significant practice and support to log into the app independently.

Using Placement Tests and Teacher Choices

Teachers can choose whether new students complete a placement test that assigns them to a place in the learning sequence. Alternatively, they can select where the student should start. This level of customization empowers educators to scaffold learning and see that each student is appropriately challenged in their learning journey.

The teacher dashboard is exceptionally user-friendly. Teachers can easily manage student learning goals and access comprehensive feedback on student performance. Additionally, printable materials that align with the lessons are accessible to add extra practice.

Playing Phonics Hero Games

Gameplay determines engagement, which is important for learning. These factors contribute to the engagement aspect of the Phonics Hero platform.

Games and Activities

Phonics Hero games are not only entertaining but also varied. The navigation features make it easy for young players to explore and interact with the app independently.

Instructions for games are clear and can be repeated as many times as the player needs. This is a helpful feature for kids who may have difficulties with hearing, attention, or memory.

Phonics Hero also features an engaging, overarching story with interesting superhero characters and various missions for children to accomplish. This is a fun, interactive addition to the games.

*Fun characters and missions will likely catch the attention of young players*

Rewards

Children earn stars by completing academic tasks, which can then be used to purchase items in a store within the app. These items—represented as digital stickers—can be placed in a secret hideout. The reward system adds an extra layer of engagement and is implemented in a way that’s unlikely to significantly detract too much from learning time.

Loading Times

Each log-in, navigation, and transition to a new game creates additional loading times in the game where a child needs to wait. The wait times vary, but can disrupt the flow of learning and engagement.

Learning with Phonics Hero

Here are the main factors that contribute to the overall quality of literacy instruction in Phonics Hero.

Lesson Organization

The lesson organization in Phonics Hero follows a clear and logical scope and sequence that accommodates various accents and regions. This structure is well-communicated on the Phonics Hero website.

Each level presents a sequence of lessons that systematically progress through key literacy skills:

Know
Read
Spell
Camera Read
Camera Spell
Sentence Reading

Camera reading and spelling refers to commonly used irregular words in the English language such as the word ‘of.’ Within each lesson, multiple opportunities and games are provided to practice and reinforce each step of the learning process. This systematic approach ensures kids are learning key literacy skills with a logical and clear step-by-step method.

Letter Sounds

The Phonics Hero program teaches letter sounds clearly and accurately. Phonics Hero provides ample practice opportunities for mastering these sound-letter correspondences, contributing to effective skill reinforcement. Phonics Hero does not include letter formation (printing) as part of the lessons.

*There are many opportunities to practice letter sound correspondences in Phonics Hero*

Letter Names

The app makes the interesting choice of excluding letter names in its instruction. As deliberately explained in this blog post, “Unfortunately, many children are introduced to letter identification by well-meaning parents and grandparents even before school entry. Teaching letter names before sounds is far from helpful.”

If you’re a parent or grandparent reading this, don’t worry. Experts have found that learning letter names before sounds is not detrimental for your children. In fact, knowing letter names is very helpful when learning to read and spell. Phonics Hero would be a stronger reading program if it included letter names as well as letter sounds in the early lessons.

Type of Phonics

Phonics Hero employs a synthetic phonics approach, which is supported by research and considered the most logical method for teaching reading and spelling. This approach involves breaking down words into individual sounds or blending individual letter sounds to form words. Synthetic phonics is highly effective for developing word-reading skills.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonics Hero includes phonemic awareness practice in their program. Blending and segmenting skills are prioritized in the game. These are important skills for new readers to practice and know.

However, 3 meta-analyses of studies on this topic have shown that practicing these skills with letters doubles the effectiveness of the activity. Unfortunately, Phonics Hero focuses on mostly using these skills without letters. The Phonics Hero website suggests waiting until a child consistently segments and blends orally before introducing letters or letter-sound correspondences. In reality, this skill can be introduced concurrently (with letters).

Finally, Phonics Hero uses final blending as the only type of phoneme blending in the program. However, it’s typically easier for children to start blending with continuous blending. This strategy may need to be supplemented to get a student started before using the program.

Type of Texts

Phonics Hero uses decodable texts. These are texts where the sounds and words being taught and practiced are integrated into the reading material. Decodable books discourage “guesswork” and encourage accurate decoding skills. These texts also include phrases and sentences, providing a supportive scaffold for transitioning from word-reading to sentence reading.

Spelling

Phonics Hero implements effective spelling procedures, including some direct instruction on segmenting words into sounds with letters, which is beneficial. The use of chaining, where one letter is changed at a time to form a new word, is also an effective strategy for spelling instruction.

Phonics Hero uses boxes in the general shape of the letter to reinforce spelling. This is not a useful method of spelling instruction. The focus in early spelling instruction should be on the sounds in the word. Identifying the outer shape of the word does not help with learning to spell.

*Spell the word ‘hip’ – the books are meant to show the general outer shape of the correct letter*

There are also small errors in the “camera spelling” section. This spelling practice is mostly for irregular words that don’t entirely match the regular phonics patterns in English.

When a child makes an error in this spelling section the program provides the sounds for the word. Unfortunately, the sounds provided in the program don’t match the word. For example, the word ‘his’ has the sounds /h/, /i/ /s/; when the final sound in ‘his’ is a /z/ sound. Making these differences and exceptions clear to children helps them identify the irregular part of the word and they will be better able to read and spell the word accurately next time.

Quality of the Phonics Hero Platform

Phonics Hero has some useful and effective teaching methods that likely help children reinforce some foundational word-reading concepts. Synthetic phonics is used with a clear, systematic scope and sequence. Phonics Hero incorporates phonemic awareness practice in their program and uses decodable texts at the phrase and sentence level to support kids in building reading fluency. The characters are fun and engaging and the app is generally easy to use.

If I were a teacher or parent using this app with my child, I’d want to know that there are some important aspects of literacy instruction that are missing from the program:

Phonics Hero does not incorporate letter formation (printing) or letter names. Make sure to include this instruction on your own, as it is important knowledge for children to have.
The phonemic awareness practice in the app is rarely done with the letters (graphemes). Showing a child how to sound out a word from left to right with letters is going to be crucial practice in addition to the Phonics Hero program.
The blending skills modeled in this game are limited, so teaching continuous blending before a child gets started would be very helpful.

Overall, many features in the Phonics Hero serve as valuable resources for literacy instruction. The app can be effectively used with some key additions and guidance from a literate adult.

To consider other phonics programs, read more on the Phonics.org reviews page!

Phonics Hero Rating

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 3.5 / 5

Usability: 3.5 / 5

Engagement: 4 / 5

Super Simple Songs App Review

Jaymi Thiessen on June 7, 2024

Building Literacy Foundations With Super Simple Songs Playlists

At phonics.org, we review the most widely-used literacy apps for kids so you can make informed decisions about what programs to consider. Continue reading to learn more about the Super Simple Songs app and website.

What is the Super Simple Songs App?

Super Simple Songs provides an immersive literacy experience through its app and website. It offers a safe environment for young learners to explore independently. With a free trial and flexible subscription plans, the Super Simple Songs app is tailored toward families seeking quality educational content.

This app is tailored for younger learners under the age of 8. It features an extensive collection of engaging songs, printable activities, and simple interactive games. The content and themes in the app vary widely in content and quality.

This review will focus on the literacy-related themes within the app.

How Easy is it to Use the Super Simple Songs App?

The following factors contribute to the ease of use of the Super Simple Songs app.

Usability

Super Simple Songs excels in usability, even for young learners. The intro to the app is a rotating wheel that can be turned by a child to choose the content they’d like to engage with.

Even for young children, the interface is intuitive and straightforward.

Parental Controls

Super Simple Songs protects the grown-up area (parental control settings) by requiring the user to answer a simple math problem to change the controls. These controls allow the adult to tailor the app experience specifically for their child or students. Parents can also limit or lock access to the app ensuring their child doesn’t exit the app and explore other types of media on the device.

The app also allows pages to be ‘frozen’ so kids can’t navigate without adult guidance. The ability to change the control and subtitle language is a thoughtful feature for families who don’t know English but would like their child to learn through the app. These comprehensive grown-up controls ensure a safe, customizable, and enjoyable learning environment for children and caregivers alike.

“Manage Playlists”

Super Simple Songs offers a comprehensive “Manage Playlists” feature, allowing caregivers to tailor the spinning content wheel to match their child’s specific interests and learning needs.

With nearly 40 content options available, it’s easy to curate playlists that cater to individual preferences, ages, and the topics being taught. This customization process is highly recommended. It ensures a more engaging and higher quality learning experience.

*The ‘Home’ screen in Super Simple Songs is easy to use and customizable*

User Engagement in Super Simple Songs

These elements enhance the overall engagement of children interacting with Super Simple Songs.

Catchy and Fun

Super Simple Songs holds young learners’ attention with its catchy and fun content. The songs and activities are carefully designed to keep children entertained and eager to learn.

The videos strike the perfect balance in length, holding the attention of even the youngest viewers without becoming overwhelming. With vibrant colors, playful animations, and adorable characters, each video creates a lively and inviting activity that sparks joy and curiosity.

The app’s content is specifically designed for younger children. Therefore, it might not resonate with older audiences. Nevertheless, the colorful, playful, and cute presentation ensures an enjoyable and memorable learning experience for the target age group.

Encourages Physical Movement

“Super Simple Songs” cleverly incorporates physical movement into some of its videos. This enhances engagement and promotes active learning.

One notable example is the “Bunny Hop ABCs” where certain letters in the alphabet song are replaced by a bunny. This bunny cues children to join in and start hopping along. Such creative ideas effectively capture children’s attention and energize their learning experience.

Super Simple Songs That Support Literacy Education

Some of the playlists in Super Simple Songs are better than others. The following songs are helpful for children learning literacy skills, so make sure to include these in your playlist!

The Super Simple Songs

Super Simple Songs are short, engaging, and playful songs that usually repeat a few keywords or concepts throughout. Don’t let the simplicity of the songs in Super Simple Songs fool you, though! These songs teach valuable skills.

Many of the vocabulary words in these songs are called “basic concepts” which are essential words to understand to comprehend language. This supports overall oral language ability as well as reading comprehension.

Repetition and clear, fun animations help children remember the information presented in the songs. Whether it’s letters, numbers, colors, or other basic concepts, the songs serve as powerful tools for vocabulary development, laying a solid foundation for language acquisition and literacy. Make sure to include the “Super Simple Songs” category in your playlist!

*Super Simple Songs support children’s language development*

Storybooks

Super Simple Songs provides a valuable resource in its digital library of books. These books appear as classic stories that are read out loud to children or interactive storybooks with a look-and-find feature. While not intended to replace an adult directly reading with their child, the app provides a nice supplement for children to hear stories independently. This is another great option to include in a learning playlist on the app.

Phonics Fun

Phonics Fun stands out for its catchy and engaging approach to letter-sound instruction. Through repetitive exposure, the Phonics Fun section of the app reinforces accurate letter-sound associations, letter names, and keywords associated with the letter sound.

The frequent repetition of letter sounds ensures that these associations are firmly established in children’s minds. This is a great resource for parents and teachers alike and should be included in customized playlists.

Caitie’s Classroom

Caitie’s Classroom is an educational resource featuring Caitie, an engaging teacher who brings real-life experiences to life to explain various concepts to children. With her clear and direct communication style, Caitie holds children’s interest, making learning both enjoyable and accessible. Through her lessons, she skillfully builds background knowledge on interesting and important topics, laying a strong foundation for reading comprehension skills.

The inclusion of “Imagination Time,” an audio-only segment, adds another dimension to the learning experience. Imagination time builds kids’ listening comprehension skills. Caitie’s Classroom is an excellent addition to the in-app playlist option if your goal is literacy education.

*Caitie is an engaging teacher who helps kids understand the world*

Not Great: The Super Simple Songs to You Should Skip

As mentioned, not all of the songs in this app are effective for literacy education. Here’s our list of songs that were not fully approved by reading experts. We recommend you leave them out of your child’s playlist. Instead, focus on the more effective songs mentioned above.

Pratfall ABCs

Pratfall ABCs presents adorable bug characters that engage with letters and associated images. However, it lacks effective integration of literacy fundamentals. While the animated bugs interact with letters and corresponding keywords, the absence of letter names and letter sounds diminishes its educational value.

Additionally, some keywords may not accurately represent the letter’s sound, such as the use of “onion” for the letter ‘o’ (onion starts with an /u/ sound). While the videos here are harmless entertainment, they are unlikely to contribute significantly to literacy learning. This part of the app may be better skipped in favor of more educational content.

*Pratfall ABCs could improve by including letter names and sounds*

Turn and Learn ABCs

Turn and Learn ABCs adopts a turning puzzle format, gradually unveiling pictures of keywords associated with each letter. However, the app falls short in directly addressing letter sounds, prioritizing the visual reveal of pictures over phonics instruction.

Despite mentioning words beginning with a specific letter—such as “bee starts with the letter b”—it neglects to emphasize letter-sound associations, which are essential for literacy development. Consequently, while the app’s interactive puzzle may capture children’s attention, neglecting letter-sound relationships diminishes its effectiveness as a literacy tool.

*The squares in Turn & Learn ABCs turn over to gradually reveal a keyword associated with the letter*

Captain Seasalt & The ABC Pirates

Captain Seasalt & The ABC Pirate presents a lively approach to early literacy instruction with its charming pirate theme. Each video features friendly pirates that visit a letter island and tell a short story using many of the letter sounds of the island they visit. While the videos explore words beginning with a particular letter, they lack explicit phonics explanations of how each letter represents its corresponding sound.

Additionally, the depiction of letter formation—often starting at the bottom—is inaccurate. It could potentially confuse young learners. Despite the creative use of a pirate map to illustrate letter formation, the incorrect portrayal detracts from the instructional value of the content.

Overall, while the app’s theme and characters may capture children’s interest, it falls short in delivering effective phonics instruction and accurate letter formation techniques.

*The ABC Pirates could improve on modeling correct letter formation*

Is the Super Simple Songs App Good for Phonics Instruction?

The Super Simple Songs app offers an engaging platform for building language and literacy skills in young learners. The app’s user-friendly interface, coupled with grown-up controls and playlist management features, ensures a safe and customizable learning experience that children can enjoy with their caregivers.

The short video options available in the app are highly engaging for young children. The songs are catchy, the animations are well-done and visually appealing, and the content is interesting.

Some of the thematic content available in Super Simple Songs has higher educational quality than others.

Super Simple Songs, Storybooks, Phonics Fun, and Caitie’s Classroom are excellent additions to classroom instruction. Additionally, these are ideal for parents and teachers interested in fostering foundational literacy learning for their children through custom playlists in the app.
Pratfall ABCs, Turn and Learn ABC, and Captain Seasalt & the ABC Pirates have less educational value than the above content areas.

The Super Simple Songs app alone will not teach a child to read. However, the app offers a playful and enjoyable learning experience. Its effectiveness in promoting literacy skills depends on the selection and integration of appropriate content.

Learn more about effective phonics instruction programs for kids by reading more Phonics.org reviews today!

Super Simple Songs App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 3.5 / 5

Usability: 4 / 5

Engagement: 4 / 5