Phonograms by SEI

This app is horribly designed. It assumes the teacher is following their lesson plans exactly. I have to go into multiple lessons to hunt for each phonogram that my child is currently learning. Would be so much nicer to have other options on how to choose the phonograms you want to practice. Also, some sounds in the higher frequencies (such as ph) come across poorly on the phone speaker. This is a problem considering this app is all about speech sounds! Overall, it was a great idea to make phonograms easier to practice, but the execution of the design is incredibly poor... especially for the price.

I was hesitant to buy this app after seeing all the low reviews but my daughters school recommended it. Additionally the teacher that recommended it showed us how to work it so it was at least working for her. After deciding to risk $4, I purchased it and mine works fine. For the complaints that the writing section doesn’t work, they need to read the instructions. You don’t actually write on the tablet. Instead it works like a flash card where you hear the sound and write the corresponding letter on line paper using proper technique. Then when you are ready, you have the app show you if you were right. As for the sounds not working, ours works fine so I can only guess it’s user error or their speaker doesn’t work well. Their expectations also may not be set right. The app doesn’t make continuous letter sounds. Instead it states it once which amounts to about 1 second of sound per letter unless the letter has more than one sound. Also if you are doing the sound quiz, it does not make a sound until the 3 second timer is up. The only reason it is not 5 stars is because the app is not very robust. I think it should have at least allowed for an optional writing element within the app instead of on paper. Plus it is not very feature reach or visually appealing for a $4 app. This app really needs to be $.99. But since my daughters school uses it, we went ahead and paid $4 for it. Normally I would rate this app with 3 stars but I wanted to give it a one star handicap to offset the negative reviews from those that didn’t follow instructions.

The charter school my child attends uses the Spalding language arts curriculum. We first started using a box of Spalding phonogram flash cards for the weekly phonogram quizzes. Those are fine but I sometimes was not 100% sure I was saying them correctly. Another parent told me about this ap and while it is not perfect I much prefer it for studying over flash cards. We get the week’s list of phonograms on Monday and then I go into the ap under differentiated practice 1-87 and check off all the ones for Friday’s quiz. Then I do the aps oral phonogram review and it shows the phonogram and gives my child a window of time to say it before the ap speaks it out loud. I can have my child review it again or move on to the next one if they got it right. Once my child has done all of the oral practice I take my phone back and have my child get out a sheet of paper. I restart the oral review and have the phone say the phonogram and my child has to write it correctly. If they don’t get it right we practice it again. This is way faster than before when we used the cards and is more effective because I know the phonogram is correct. I have an iPhone 7, iPhone X and an old iPad and have zero trouble with the sound not playing on any of the devices. The narrators voice is clear and much better than I would have thought for a computer ap. One star off because there is no way to save the week’s phonograms. I can pick them out for differentiated practice but once I get out of the ap all the phonograms I clicked are not saved. So all that hunting and pecking to only practice the random 30 I need is lost. Still worth the money but an update to allow this feature would be so very helpful and a huge time savings.