A unique alphabet app has been designed by Deakin University (Australia) researchers specialising in literacy education, IT and graphic design to support children beginning to learn letter-sound relationships. Tested with Australian primary school students, the unique 'form-taking' images used in this app have been found to be more effective at assisting children to learn common letter-sound relationships than images that are not form-taking.
A to Z Safari offers engaging mini-games to explore and reinforce letter-sound relationships, along with a password-protected admin/data area where students' progress and gameplay statistics are recorded - data which can be emailed directly to the teacher.
A to Z Safari has not been designed to replace classroom activities, but was designed as an electronic application to complement them. An A3-sized alphabet chart accompanies the app in the teacher area so that teachers can print the charts out to place on their students' tables for their reference outside of gameplay.
Five mini-games are 'match' based games where users must match either:
Five mini-games are 'memory' based games where users must tap a leaf for it to flip over and then match:
Turn your learners into learning explorers!
You can export the QR Codes to yourself from within the app, or you can download them here.
Simply a chance to explore and interact with the letters of the alphabet:
The password-protected teacher admin area allows students to be 'tested' and their results recorded when playing the match game and its five levels. During testing a variety of different user statistics are collected in real time such as the number of correct and incorrect attempts, along with what was selected in error and the time taken to complete a level. These results are stored onto the iPad, and can be emailed to a teacher in the form of a spreadsheet.
To view a copy of our privacy statement for the data that can be collected via our app, click here.
Display the data of individual children or of the whole class with beautifully detailed bar and line charts. Filter by numerous variables such as Accuracy, Duration and Re-ask Count, either on a per-letter or a per-session basis. This level of detail makes it much easier to track the progress of your students or children, highlighting their competency with each letter of the alphabet.
Teachers will enjoy the class snapshot, allowing them to track their class's progress over time and assist in their planning of class material and end of term reports, or to identify and guide their teaching on an individual student basis. And parents can play a fun and active role in their children's learning, tracking their progress across months or even years.
Each alphabet letter has been specially designed to represent the most common sound of the letter, as well as its shape. For example, 'C' for the initial sound in 'cat', also takes on the shape of the letter 'C'. This special form-taking design has been proven to be more effective than letters that are non form-taking in their design!
To view and download a printable copy of the letter chart for use in your classroom, click here.
Copyright © Deakin University 2017. A to Z Safari was developed by staff and students of Deakin University, Australia. All images (including but not limited to icons, letter-images, sounds, and logos) are trademark of Deakin University, Australia, and must not be utilized or distributed for any purpose other than for non-commercial educational purposes in conjunction with the A to Z Safari app.