6 Red Flags of Apps to Help Your Child “Learn-to-Read”🚩
“Software should actually teach kids to read, not just babysit them.”
🚩#1
Full of games and videos
There are 2 main skills involved in learning to read:
memorizing letter/sound pairs
blend those sounds together into words
If kids are doing puzzles, videos, and drawing, then they’re being not being taught, they’re being entertained.
🚩#2
Passive consumption
No one believes that your kid can learn to swim by watching videos, but companies want you to believe that your kid can learn to read by watching videos. Learning to read is a skill that requires practice and effort, just like anything else.
🚩#3
Teaching reading requires kids to learn letter sounds, not letter names. Teaching kids letter names is actually harmful for learning to read, because now kids have to remember not to use those names. We don’t pronounce cat “seeayytee”.
Teaching letter names
🚩#4
Teaching capital letters
Look at what you’re reading right now. 95% of letters are lowercase. If you want kids to learn to read, start with letters that they’re actually going to see! Capital letters are edge cases that kids don’t need to worry about until later.
🚩#5
Not teaching blending
The core skill of reading is taking blending individual letter sounds smoothly into a word with no pauses between them It’s a difficult skill, and so most reading apps don’t teach it. They just say “here’s a word, it has these sounds in it".
🚩#6
No Failure
Digital babysitters succeed by keeping kids glued to screens. Things like “thinking” or “failure” reduce engagement, so they must be eliminated. Kids can always progress, learning nothing, tapping blindly in order to get to the next game or video.
“Humans can’t teach like Mentava does.”
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Mentava isn’t an edutainment “app” to babysit your child. Our goal is to take your child from zero to "early reader" (reading Green Eggs and Ham, or Elephant and Piggie books) in under a year, and often faster.
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Unlimited Access to Mentava’s Tutoring App
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