What are the best learning-to-read apps for young kids? How about special needs students? Over 5 million children receive special education and related services each year in the United States.
Part of these services includes special instruction that caters to each child’s unique needs and helps them learn the information and skills that they need to succeed.
However, sometimes the help they receive at school just isn’t enough to reinforce the material. This is especially true when it comes to the fundamentals like learning to read. Thanks to technology, however, there’s an app for that!
If you’re a special education teacher or mother of a child with special needs, here’s a rundown of the best learning-to-read apps.
Rainbow Sentences
Rainbow Sentences is great for working on creating and reading grammatically correct sentence structures. On top of that, it’s easy to use and visual with cartoon photos.
This app by Mobile Education Store is great because you can adapt it to suit different students’ learning styles and levels. It also allows teachers to set up the different levels of play how they like.
The app features three different levels. Each level contains 55 sentences each and helps guide children through each level in a fun way with images and easy-to-read text.
The goal is essentially to look at the images in each story and choose which words go in which blanks for each sentence. While this might sound complicated, it’s far from it! Teachers and parents can even choose from one of six different sentence complexities.
Proloquo2Go
If you’re looking for an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) app, then this is one you’ll definitely need to check out.
Not all of the best learning-to-read apps have to focus on learning to actually read. Part of being a competent reader is pronunciation and vocalization. This can be tough for readers who have autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, apraxia, or similar conditions.
With Proloquo2Go, children can view visual vocabulary and create sentences. These sentences tend to center around wants, needs, and similar messages.
What’s especially great about this app, though, is that it is really customizable and can choose from various accents. This makes it easier for the reader to understand and allows them to connect with whichever voice they like.
The Sounding Out Machine
Reading programs for special education don’t always focus on specifics such as proper pronunciation or how to sound out words. The Sounding Out Machine is here to help with that!
This reading app helps children focus on difficult words one by one. It teaches them how to sound out words when reading and even models for them how to sound out the harder ones.
This is one of the best reading apps for children who already have a solid foundation when it comes to reading but need help with decoding. Simply upload a photo of the text, select the difficult word, and voila.
Story Builder
Story Builder is great for children who need to practice reading aloud. It records stories in the child’s voice, which helps improve auditory processing skills.
The app also works on reading comprehension skills by asking questions throughout each story. Children choose from multiple choice answers. Or, they can improve a section of the story with a fill-in-the-blank format.
This is a little complex, which means that this app is suitable for students who already have a solid reading foundation.
Elastic Alphabets
Want to play, listen and learn to write the alphabet? This is exactly what Elastic Alphabets offers to children with special needs. Due to the highly visual and interactive platform, it’s great for children who might have a hard time focusing or concentrating on one task at a time.
Children can look at illustrations of each letter and then trace them on the screen. This is great for beginner learners who need extra help learning the alphabet or learning how to write properly.
Even better are the animations that accompany each activity. Once you trace the A, for example, an apple appears on the screen and transforms into an arrow to lead you onto the B.
Then, after tracing the B, a balloon appears and pops to reveal the letter C. This goes on and on in a truly creative way.
ABC Animals
Like Elastic Alphabets, ABC Animals is one of the best reading apps for first graders or for those who need some reinforcement.
The app appears to be a typical ABC book but increases the fun for special needs learners by transforming a boring book into a touch experience. In this app, expect readers to enjoy:
- Learning the alphabet with fun animations
- Playing word guessing games to build vocabulary
- Learning letter shapes by tracing them
Because rhyming is one of the foundational skills that play a role in reading readiness, ABC Animals works hard to ensure that’s at the main core of the app.
As a bonus, the app includes blooper outtakes for each letter. While these aren’t particularly educational, they add to the fun factor and make learning how to read a pleasant experience for children.
Learn with Rufus
If you’re looking for an app that helps students read while also helping them with other skills, Learn with Rufus is the best. This one’s particularly good for ASD children who have trouble recognizing emotions and understanding facial expressions.
What’s even better is that this app is actually four smaller apps:
- Groups and Categories: Learn about groups of common objects
- Feelings and Emotions: Learn how to match facial expressions with emotions
- Boys and Girls: Learn about different faces and their genders
- Numbers and Counting: Learn about the number line
The Feelings and Emotions app is a great place to start. In between games, there are short breaks where children can play games.
It’s important to note that the creator of this app is a clinical and developmental psychologist with experience working with children with ASD.
Reader Bee
This app has won numerous parent awards for its interactivity. Parents love that children can learn through multisensory experiences (like hearing, touching, watching, etc.). And, that’s great for children with special needs.
What Reader Bee does is helps children work with six consonants around one vowel. They arrange these in what they call a “daisy.” This gives them a physical representation of the vowel’s placement in a word.
They learn with their ears, eyes, and fingers. This helps increase the neural connections needed to improve.
Bob’s Books #1: Reading Magic
Bob’s Books is one of the best learning-to-read apps for phonics. It teaches young kids early phonics in a fun and interactive way.
Children first learn the sounds of each letter. Then, they learn how to combine them into short words. However, it gets even more interactive.
When kids match the letters to a word or spell out a word, the object vibrantly fills with color! Black and white images change to colorful pictures that look like magic.
Outloud Citymals
What’s so great about Outloud Citymals is that it reads more like a game than just one of the best learning-to-reads apps. It’s great for Speech & Language Therapists and Teachers who need a little extra help with their students.
It helps children with speech difficulties improve vocalizations as it is a voice-activated game. The goal? Change the scene using certain vocalizations.
Children with complex communication needs can benefit most from this learning app as it helps with speech production as well as understanding emotion and causality.
Super Why
It’s not rare for a child with special needs to be able to read a text super fast and reiterate it word for the word. Sometimes, what they need help with is comprehension.
Super Why is one of the best reading comprehension apps because it offers interactive literacy games. You’ll see the child learning better comprehension skills as they fill in the gaps and choose endings to the stories.
Also expect to see lots of words, letters, rhyming, and spelling activities. These are great for improving reading skills. They’re also great for improving basic writing skills.
And, as we all know, writing and reading skills go hand in hand.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Everybody’s favorite book is now an app. And, the app is great for special needs learners.
Reading readiness is what this app provides. It helps with identifying, matching, and sorting shapes. This helps children recognize patterns and develop a foundation needing for decoding.
The basic shapes pop up on the screen in bright colors that allow children to identify different scales, shades, and patterns.
As they learn how to combine shapes, they’ll learn how to combine letters into words, making this a great app for pre-readers.
Working with the Best Learning-to-Read Apps
As a parent or educator of a child with special needs, it’s important to understand that working with the best learning to read apps depends on the readiness of your child.
Part of this readiness depends on their ability to coordinate multiple sensory systems and the development of neurological pathways. These happen naturally as a child grows and plays. However, by introducing learning apps into their education, you can help them grow even more.
Reading apps are a great way to foster a sense of play while ensuring they’re getting the reinforcement they need.
If you have more questions about how to cater special education to your student or child’s needs, get in contact.
