PocketPhonics Stories To Teach 4 Year-Olds To Read Their First Storybook in Just 10 Weeks
App developer launches step-by-step reading programme for 4 to 6 year-olds that includes 42 storybooks
London, 5th January 2015, Today, Apps in My Pocket, UK developer of top-ranking education software used by over 2,000 schools worldwide, unveiled its latest app, PocketPhonics Stories. The app will help children as young as four learn to read their first storybook in just 10 weeks. PocketPhonics Stories follows the synthetic phonics approach used in the National Curriculum and is available for download from the App Store today.
PocketPhonics Stories will guide children through the literacy journey, beginning with helping children to learn their first letter sounds and ending with them being able to read 42 stories within the app by themselves. Parents are often unsure of when their child can start to read. If children are given storybooks beyond their reading ability, they can quickly become frustrated and disheartened. PocketPhonics Stories is split in to 12 groups of letter sounds, each group is followed by a set of storybooks that contain those letter sounds. Once the child has mastered one group of letter sounds, they progress to reading the storybooks that tests their knowledge of these letter sounds. Once that task is completed they then move on to the next group of sounds, and so on.
In the first group of letter sounds, there are six sounds to master before the child will be able to complete their first storybook. Most children of four and over will start to read their first storybook within 10 weeks if they are using the app for 15 minutes every day.
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 letter sound stage. These certificates are a much-loved feature of the original PocketPhonics app, which launched in 2008 and has been downloaded over half a million times.
By being able to start reading a storybook with a full narrative in just 10 weeks, children will be encouraged instead of frustrated to read. Before apps like PocketPhonics Stories, children would get frustrated when they discovered a word they couldn’t say. In PocketPhonics Stories, children can press down on an unfamiliar word, the app will sound out the letters to help remind the child what the word says. If that’s not enough, they can tap again to hear the word and see a picture that illustrates its meaning.
Apps in My Pocket Director, John Friend, said, “Since the launch of PocketPhonics six years ago, we have helped hundreds of thousands of children learn their letter sounds. We hope that PocketPhonics Stories will help even more reach their next milestone in literacy, reading their first storybook.”
PocketPhonics Stories will cost £19.99/$28.99, but will launch at the discounted price of £15.99/$22.99
Schools should enquire about a free trial.
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About Apps in My Pocket
Apps in My Pocket Ltd is a UK based company established in 2008 to create apps for iOS that deliver best educational practice. The educational excellence of PocketPhonics has made it one of the best-selling apps for teaching children to read and write. More than 2.2 million Apps have been downloaded including over 500,000 of the paid version, and 1,700,000 of the free “Lite” version. PocketPhonics and PocketPhonics Stories includes both UK and US English.