Common Sense Media Review
By Kim Alessi
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Phonics app is easy to use but not for beginners.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 6+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Download
Videos and Photos
Phonics Genius
Parent and Kid Reviews
Privacy Rating Warning
Privacy Rating
Our expert evaluators create our privacy ratings. The ratings are designed to help you understand how apps use your data for commercial purposes.
Pass
Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices.
Warning
Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices.
Fail
Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used.
Privacy Rating
Our expert evaluators create our privacy ratings. The ratings are designed to help you understand how apps use your data for commercial purposes.
Pass
Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices.
Warning
Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices.
Fail
Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used.
What's It About?
Kids begin by selecting a letter or letter combination from the app's home screen, then choose whether they want the sound at the beginning, middle, or end of a word set. In Learning Mode, kids view individual phonics flashcards and practice recognizing letter sounds and words. The app defaults to sounding out the word and highlights the letter sound in red face type on the flash card. In Game Mode, kids try to match a letter sound in a spoken word to as many as six different flash cards containing the same letter sound.
Is It Any Good?
Phonics Genius is a great app for kids with prior reading experience to improve their reading skills. It intelligently organizes words by letter or letter combination sounds and lets kids practice phonemic awareness and build sight words. Phonics Genius also boosts confidence and challenges kids to try reading new, more complex words.
Phonics Genius falls short, however, on two key fronts. First, the app doesn't have common letter combinations that are essential for beginning readers, such as -at, -et, and -it words. The app also lacks an easy way to customize flash card sets to a show a specific word length in a set. Beginning readers can handle three- and four- letter words ("ship," for example) but may get overwhelmed with larger words that, by default, are in the same set with the same letter sound (i.e. "sheepskin," for example). As is, Phonics Genius is best for kids who are emergent readers with previous reading experience.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Parents can help kids build word power by learning the definitions of the words they're reading.
Play a rhyming game with the word kids are learning. Rhyming helps kids develop phonemic awareness by recognizing letter and sound patterns. It also helps increase vocabulary and motivates learning.
App Details
- Devices : iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad
- Subjects : Language & Reading : letter or word recognition , phonics , reading , spelling
- Pricing structure : Paid
- Release date : March 13, 2012
- Genre : Education
- Publisher : Innovative Mobile Apps
- Version : 6.1
- Minimum software requirements : Requires iOS 8.0 or later.
- Last updated : November 11, 2020
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