Hearbuilder Phonological Awareness
Sound-based activities build listening and phonics skills.
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Hearbuilder Phonological Awareness
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this app.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Hearbuilder Phonological Awareness is a subscription-based program that helps kids develop phonological awareness, the ability to pick up on the sounds in spoken language, which can improve reading. Conversely, reading improves phonological awareness, so some emerging readers might struggle with some of these auditory exercises that test attention and listening skills as well. Kids will advance through rock-band-themed activities; since the app is generally for classroom use, you may want to work through the games along with your child.
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What’s It About?
Kids work on nine phonological awareness skills: sentence segmentation, syllable blending, syllable segmentation, rhyming, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation and identification, phoneme deletion, phoneme addition, and phoneme manipulation. The activities' story revolves around a rock-band theme, with each activity relating to the band: album titles, making music, getting new band members, and so on. In the activities, kids hear words and manipulate them, changing vowel sounds or beginning sounds to create new words, all of which must be identified by how they sound. They can hit the redo arrow to hear the instructions and words again, but no visual hints are offered.
Is It Any Good?
HEARBUILDER PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS is designed with classrooms in mind, but parents may find it useful to check kids' awareness of sounds. The activities are game-show style, with voice-overs asking questions and giving options for kids to choose answers from. The rock band backstory is fun, and the music theme will get kids excited at the same time it underscores the sound/listening concepts. The activities themselves are challenging and require focused listening skills; parents would most likely want to sit with kids to work through them one on one.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about syllables and sounds in words. Be careful to speak clearly and enunciate well around prereaders.
Practice reading aloud with your kids; help them with challenging words.
App Details
- Devices: iPad, Android, Kindle Fire
- Subjects: Language & Reading: speaking
- Skills: Thinking & Reasoning: part-whole relationships, thinking critically, Communication: listening
- Pricing structure: Free to try ($59-$199/year)
- Release date: April 9, 2014
- Category: Education
- Topics: Music and Sing-Along
- Publisher: Super Duper Publications
- Version: 1.4.1
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 6.0 or later; Android 2.2 and up
- Last updated: October 28, 2021
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