The idea of using an app to teach your child or children might seem a bit foreign if you are not technically minded. However, don’t let that stop you from seeing what is available. After all, these apps are literally designed for children, meaning that they are purposely made to be easy to use and enjoyable.
Reading apps are also a great way to grab children’s attention, as most are already addicted to mobile devices. They need little encouragement to use a phone or tablet for a fun activity. These apps take advantage of that by making literacy improvement activities fun and interactive.
Learning to write can be tricky and it is really only when a child’s vocabulary expands that they can write sentences properly. Structure, although there are rules, is often really learned through seeing, hearing, and mimicking.
Most people do not think about grammar rules when writing, we write mostly from patterns that we have learned. These patterns are learned largely from hearing literate people speak and through reading books.
So, although writing is important, it is vital that children learn to read and read as much as possible.
How Can I Help My Struggling Reader at Home?
Teaching literacy at home can seem daunting. However, there is a range of apps to support students struggling with reading and writing.
These apps take the pressure off of parents by including not only interesting materials but fully interactive and supportive features, such as:
- Colorful illustrations
- Original and fun content
- Interactive or guided reading
- Quizzes and questions for comprehension
- Game like features
- Reports for parents or the student
- AI tutors
All of these features can merge to create an experience that is fun, interactive, and draws the child into the adventures and stories they are reading. It makes the process of learning to read relaxing, enjoyable, and more of a game than using textbooks.
What Is The Best App To Teach A Child To Read?
In order to improve literacy, reading practice is an ideal place to start. Readability was designed for education and has received parental feedback such as “better than any other online reading assistant” and “the app was able to gauge my daughter’s reading level”. Parents and their children are loving the Readability experience!
So, let’s take a look at why it’s the best reading app for children:
- It is absolutely stuffed with amazing content for all ability levels to avoid any chance of boredom.
- Stories can be listened to as they are read aloud and the words are highlighted to allow the learner to easily follow along.
- The built-in AI provides level-appropriate suggestions for what to read next, based on the learner’s previous performance.
- The AI also provides real-time pronunciation feedback, actually hearing when something is mispronounced and providing the correct pronunciation.
- IVQA™ (Interactive Voice-based Questions & Answers) asks questions about the story, acting as an ‘almost’ live tutor. The child can answer the questions by speaking to the app, as they would any normal tutor.
- Stories are not only great fun to read, but all of them have educational elements woven into them.
- Available anytime and anyplace a tablet or mobile phone can be used.
- Results can be seen by all ‘admin’ of the app, meaning that parents or carers can keep track of progress and see real results that are constantly and almost instantly updated.
So, if you’ve been looking through lots of apps to support struggling students in reading and writing, consider giving Readability a try.
Not only is this reading app great and actually teaching reading in a fun and interactive way, but it also comes with a 7-day free trial. So, you literally have nothing to lose. However, from the results, you’ll see and the feedback parents are giving us, we highly doubt you’ll want to stop after just 7-days.
