PocketPhonics Stories

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The app guides children through the literacy journey, beginning with helping them to learn and write their first letter sounds and ending with them being able to read the app's 43 stories by themselves.

PocketPhonics Stories is split in to 12 groups of letter sounds, each group is followed by a set of storybooks that use those letter sounds. Kids read storybooks that are on the right level for them.

In the first group of letter sounds, there are six sounds to master before the child will be able to read their first storybook. Most children aged 4+ will start to read their first storybook within 10 weeks if they are using the app for 15 mins everyday.

Parents and teachers can easily monitor children’s progress online. They can see what stage the child is currently at, any letter sounds they are having difficulty with and what storybooks have been read. Furthermore, teachers and parents are also emailed a certificate when a child completes a task.

Children can tap an unfamiliar word in a story, and the app will sound out the letters to help the child understand what the word says. If that’s not enough, they can tap again to hear the actual word and see a picture that illustrates its meaning.

The storybooks gradually introduce high-frequency words like “the” and “to” that are harder to read because they follow less common spelling rules. Words that the child is likely to find difficult to read in a story are highlighted in red. This takes into account what the app has learned about the child’s phonics knowledge and ability to read longer words.

As the child reads a story, the child’s ability to read certain keywords in the storybooks will be tested to make sure they can read them and understand their meaning.

At the end of the story, the app tests the child on the new words in that story. Each word is spoken in turn, and the child has to select the written form of the word. Only once they are able to correctly identify all the words in all the books on this level, does the app move on to teach them the next group of letter sounds.

The app is aligned with the Common Core State Standards. Specifically, children master the following skills:

* writing letters (more choice of handwriting styles than any other app)
* recognising 72 letter sounds (e.g. ‘ch’ are the letters that make the initial sound in ‘chat’)
* blending letter sounds together to make words (e.g ‘ch-a-t’)
* hearing a word and selecting its written form (e.g. the app says, “chat”, the child has to select ‘chat’ from a group of words - some of which are similar to chat)

There's a FREE GUIDE to teaching kids to read available through the app.

Phonics (letter sounds) help children to read by understanding the sounds that letters make. The National Reading Panel concluded that “children who have phonics instruction read better and spell better than other children”.

Montessori & other experts recommend not including letter names when teaching letter sounds.

How it works
* 6-day free trial
* The $1.99 monthly and $15.99 annual subscription unlock access to all books and phonics levels for an unlimited number of children
* The subscription gives you access to more books as they are added
* Once subscribed, your subscription auto-renews each month or annually. However, you can easily turn auto renew off via the Settings app
* Payment will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase
* Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period
* Cannot cancel current subscription during its subscription period

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