PocketPhonics Stories - Great for the EYFS classroom!



There are hundreds and thousands of phonics apps available on the App store. Some that I have used are fantastic; others are questionable to say the least. Our approach at my school was to focus on a couple of really useful phonics apps, one of these is PocketPhonics.

What I love about PocketPhonics is that children learn initial letters and sounds, blending words but also handwriting. When I used this app over a term with a mixed reception/year 1 class, the rapid progression in handwriting especially with the boys was impressive. We invested in a class set of stylus pens and used these whenever possible as we felt this would be more beneficial for improving children's pencil grasp development, (Steve from iPad Educators recently blogged about Stylus pens.) It really helped children being able to get instant feedback if they make a mistake in writing the letters or blending words. 

The team behind PocketPhonics have now released another app, PocketPhonics Stories. 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. They read storybooks that are on the right level for them. Once that task is completed they then move on to the next group of sounds, and so on. 

It is another fantastic resource to help children learn initial letters, words and build up vocabulary to read their own storybooks. If children's enjoyment and engagement for the original PocketPhonics is anything to go by, they will love this app too. I can't wait to give it a whirl in class. 

You can download a copy of PocketPhonics stories here - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/pocketphonics-stories/id882249080?mt=8

I have also managed to get my hands on some promo codes for the PocketPhonics app that I will be giving away on my facebook page -



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