About ReadBorn
ReadBorn is an iPhone and iPad app that teaches children to read with phonics. Your child reads out loud, the app listens, and it helps only when they get stuck. It is made by a small team, and a K-1 teacher worked on the app with us.
Who makes ReadBorn
ReadBorn is built by a small team: the same people make the lessons, the films, the books and this website. A K-1 teacher worked on the app with the team.
The guides and blog posts on this site are published under one pen name, Helen Wrenfield. It is the team's name, not one person's, so every guide speaks with one voice and has one page that says who wrote it.
Why it listens
Learning to read takes a listener. A child sounding out a word needs someone to hear each sound and catch the moment one goes wrong, every day, for months. Most families cannot be that listener every evening, and a worksheet cannot hear anything at all.
So the app does the listening. Your child says the sounds and the words out loud, ReadBorn hears them with Apple's speech recognition, and it steps in only when they are stuck.
The method
ReadBorn follows systematic synthetic phonics: letter sounds first, in a fixed order, then blending those sounds into short real words, then the rest of the alphabet, sound teams, vowel teams, longer words and real books.
It teaches decoding, never guessing. A child is not asked to work a word out from the picture, the sentence or the first letter. In the books and stories, when a word is missed, the app plays its letter sounds one at a time and hands the turn straight back, because joining the sounds is the skill being built. Only after a second miss does it say the word once and move on. Sight words are taught whole, so they are said, never sounded out.
What is inside the app
- 10 levels, from first sounds to real books read aloud.
- 108 classes and 847 short lessons, each class a short trail of films, games, speaking and reading.
- 26 letter sounds, taught one at a time, and 102 sight words taught as whole words, 88 of them from the Dolch lists.
- 171 decodable stories, each one opening only when your child has learned its sounds.
- Handwriting in 107 of the 108 classes, traced stroke by stroke.
- A real book in 83 classes, starting from the very first level.
- Up to 5 child profiles on one device.
Privacy
Your child's voice never reaches our servers. The sound-it-out games are heard on the device, and books and stories use Apple's speech recognition service. There are no ads, and no data is sold. The privacy policy says exactly what is collected and why.
How we write
Every guide answers one question parents ask, and the app's catalog numbers, such as its levels, classes and stories, are checked against the app itself before a page goes live. Our editorial standards explain how a guide is written, checked and corrected.
Talk to us
Write to [email protected], or start at the support page.
SEE IT FOR YOURSELF
Let your child read to ReadBorn
Your child reads out loud. ReadBorn listens and helps only when they get stuck.
Keep going
ReadBorn is an iPhone and iPad app that teaches children to read by phonics for ages 3 to 8 and up. The child sounds words out loud, the app listens with Apple's speech recognition and helps only when they get stuck, and it hatches a baby animal for every class the child finishes.