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

Khan Academy Kids Review for Learning to Read

Jaymi Thiessen on April 12, 2024

Khan Academy Kids is a resource for children ages 2 to 8. It provides a diverse range of educational content free of charge and without ads.

Phonics.org provides literacy app reviews so you can make more informed choices for your students and kids. For an in-depth Khan Academy Kids review and exploration of the popular learning app, read on!

While the Khan Academy app covers various subjects, this review focuses on the literacy features.

Positive Aspects of Khan Academy Kids: Learning!

There are a lot of great things about the Khan Academy Kids app. Let’s take a look.

Learner Engagement

Activities in this app are attainable and enjoyable for children. Visually, the app is a delight, with smooth animations and vibrant graphics that capture the imagination. The “Super Simple Songs” videos add an extra layer of entertainment and fun to the learning experience.

This app has a reward system of collecting points to unlock accessories and costumes for the characters in the game. This aspect of the app doesn’t seem necessary but is unlikely to be too distracting from the educational aspects of the game.

Usability

Khan Academy Kids offers a user-friendly experience. Users can engage with the app via two distinct pathways:

A map with lessons to explore step-by-step
A ‘Library’ with a selection of all lessons organized by subject and grade

Navigation within the app is intuitive and allows for easy exploration and gameplay. The option to repeat instructions within the games enhances accessibility. However, the inclusion of a scope and sequence outlining letter and phonics skills would further benefit educators and parents in tracking children’s progress and aligning learning objectives.

Direct Instruction

Direct and explicit instruction is a positive feature of Khan Academy Kids. This type of instruction happens through engaging videos featuring characters within the app. These instructional segments offer concise and clear explanations of various topics.

Some of these instructional videos explain foundational concepts that are often overlooked. For example, the app explains many concepts of print, such as the parts of a book, how to turn pages, and the difference between a letter and a word. The ability to rewatch these instructional videos at any time supports memory and recall of important ideas.

Content Area Books

The digital library within Khan Academy Kids is a standout feature. This library offers a diverse selection of content that includes fiction and nonfiction books.

Users can choose between having the book read aloud to them or reading the book to themselves.

Some examples of book categories in the app include:

Dinosaurs
Community Helpers
National Geographic: Young Explorer
Women Leading the Way
Spanish Stories

This diversity in topics is appealing to many early readers and their specific interests.

Practice Important Vocabulary

Khan Academy Kids excels in vocabulary development. The app begins by introducing ‘basic concepts’ which are vocabulary words that are crucial for understanding directions and fundamental for overall learning. This approach ensures that children grasp essential vocabulary from the outset, setting them on a solid path toward reading comprehension.

Letter Sounds

Khan Academy Kids delivers accurate and consistent instruction with letter sounds. Through various engaging activities, the app provides multiple avenues for children to practice and reinforce their understanding of letter sounds.

This comprehensive approach ensures that young learners develop a solid foundation in phonics, a crucial skill that forms the basis of early literacy and language acquisition.

Phonological Awareness

In Khan Academy Kids, phonological awareness receives ample attention, particularly at the kindergarten level. Children engage in abundant practice with rhyming, syllabication, and blending sounds. A focus on developing these skills can be essential for learning to read and spell words.

Room for Improvement in Khan Academy Kids: Learning! App

There are some aspects of this educational app that need improvement. Let’s focus on the biggest ones.

Letter Formation

Khan Academy Kids offers letter formation activities as part of its curriculum, but it falls short in accuracy for certain letters. Some letter formations taught in the app do not align with standard practices used by teachers or occupational therapists. Improving the accuracy and consistency of letter formation within the app could mitigate confusion for young students as they develop their handwriting skills.

Decoding (Word-Reading) Practice

One of the most important features of a learning-to-read app is direct instruction and practice in sounding out words. Khan Academy mainly relies on word families to teach children how to sound out words. This can be a helpful approach but is often less effective than simply blending individual sounds to read a word.

*Learning word families is a focus in Khan Academy Kids: Learning!*

Many of the sound blending activities in Khan Academy Kids are great but would be better with the inclusion of letters in some of these activities. Opportunities to see or practice sounding out a word with its individual sounds are few and far between in this app.

Sight Words

In Khan Academy Kids, sight word instruction—or what might more accurately be termed high-frequency word instruction—is incorporated into the learning curriculum. These often irregularly-spelled words are introduced in groups of four or so and children are encouraged to do activities that require memorization of a whole word.

The best way to remember high-frequency words is to sound them out whenever possible. Words like ‘had’ and ‘him’ follow basic phonics rules and should be sounded out. Trying to memorize them by appearance is unlikely to help with word recall; especially when so many words are introduced at the same time.

*Avoid activities that require memorization of a word that could have been sounded out*

Decodable Books

In Khan Academy Kids, there are limited decodable books available, primarily found at the kindergarten level. Decodable books have words that kids can sound out due to prior phonics knowledge.

However, the use of these books in the app will not fully leverage their potential. During lessons, the children experience decodable books as read-alouds, bypassing opportunities for them to practice phonetic decoding.

Additionally, the option to read the books independently is not prominently featured in the books. This represents a significant missed opportunity to engage children in active reading, where they could practice sounding out words and phrases independently, thus reinforcing their phonics skills and fostering greater reading fluency.

Is the Khan Academy Kids App Good for Phonics Instruction?

A close look at the Khan Academy Kids: Learning! App shows that it offers a wealth of educational resources for young learners. The engaging content, digital library, and instructional videos contribute positively to the learning experience.

However, the app does have its shortcomings. While it excels in areas like vocabulary development and language comprehension, there are notable areas that require improvement.

The letter formation activities could benefit from greater accuracy and alignment with standard practices. Also, the reliance on word families over individual phonetic decoding in word reading may limit its effectiveness. The limited availability and underutilization of decodable books represent missed opportunities for improving reading confidence and fluency.

Despite its strengths, there is room for Khan Academy Kids to enhance its approach to certain aspects of literacy instruction to better support young learners in their reading journey.

For more detailed reviews on literacy apps, explore phonics.org for informed decision-making regarding educational resources for children or students.

Khan Academy Kids: Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 2.5/5
Usability: 4/5
Engagement: 4/5