Bottom line: The Sounding Out Machine offers young readers an opportunity to learn independently by helping students break down words and sound them out just as if they were working with a teacher or parent. By allowing children to use pages from their own reading in the app itself, the app allows kids to better focus on the skills.
If you would like to purchase the Sounding Out Machine from Fizzbrain Ltd. ($3.99, iPad), please use the handy link below so they’ll know how you found them.
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No ads or in-app purchases, but there are external links for emailing
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Parents and teachers alike can all sympathize with having a student who seems to have difficulty focusing while reading. Many children use the index card method to help isolate words on a page in order to be able to break them down and sound them out. But sometimes an index card can become a distraction all in itself. The Sounding Out Machine offers the same abilities but within the more streamlined, less threatening setting of an app.
This app offers three ways to access words that a child is challenged by. The first method is the Camera Mode. Students can take a picture of an actual page in a book they are reading and then view it on the screen. Teachers or parents can also save pages of different books to the camera roll to access later via Library Mode. Users can also go straight to Typing Mode and directly enter a word that they are having difficulty with.
Once a page is accessed, users can use a word window to box in a word that is giving them difficulty. Once the word is isolated in the word box, users can tap the “read my word” button at the bottom of the screen to take that word to the next screen. (This is the screen we are taken directly to in Typing Mode.) Little learners are then prompted to type in the word in question using the keyboard provided. After the word is typed in, users click “done” to move on (after verifying that the words match). The next screen shows the word broken down into segment by using different font colors. At this point users can either use their own color blocked card on the screen to sound out the word in pieces or click “teach me” to see/hear the word sounded out.
The Sounding Out Machine can be customized for each student by changing the style of the word cards and the colors of the word window. Separate accounts can be set up for different students to be able to track their progress separately. Teachers and parents can keep track of what words their student is working on through the use of the email feature making it easy for them to customize lessons for each child.
What I liked:
- The Sounding Out Machine is easy to use, even for beginning readers. It serves as a simple way to help kids break down and decode words that are giving them trouble.
- I like being able to pictures of actual pages from a book my child is reading. Somehow being able to isolate the one page in the app helps to eliminate some of the distractions that we sometimes have when reading.
What I might change:
- We grew frustrated when words weren’t in the app's dictionary and the app was unable to recognize or help with the sounding out. I wish that the app had the capability of breaking down words that weren’t already in its dictionary. It was suggested that we use our word cards to sound out, and that’s fine, but I’d love to have seen the app sound out the parts at least.
- When using the camera mode, I found myself wishing that the app had character recognition capabilities.
Overall, the Sounding Out Machine could be a useful tool that allows kids to work independently to decode and sound out words that are challenging them. Somehow, being able to do these things in an app setting seems to make it less stressful for many kids. 4 stars.
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Kelli's kids have a holiday tomorrow. Kelli does not. How is that fair? Smart Apps for Kids was paid a fee to review this app in a priority fashion.
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