An overview of our first app: Phonic Street

As I explained in my last post we are about to launch our first app on the 8^th Dec! In preparation I thought I’d provide an overview of each of the game’s 7 levels.

The game is set on a busy high street and the aim is to help the main characters Millie and Mike (who ride a tandem bike) to complete certain tasks designed to develop phonic awareness. We felt by setting the game on a high street with familiar shops and lots of different talking points it would make the game more engaging. Remember, levels 1 and 2 are completely free so it would be fantastic if you could download the game and let us know what you think.

Here’s a quick summary of each level:

Level One: The Construction Site

Level 1 focuses on rhyming words. Players have to help Millie and Mike move bricks into a wheelbarrow on the construction site. Each brick has a picture on it and players have to drag the pictures that rhyme into the wheelbarrow. When you tap the brick a voice recording says the name of the picture on the brick (in case there’s any confusion).

Level Two: The Post Office

Level two focuses on initial sounds. The context for this game is that a naughty monkey has broken into the post office and opened up all of the parcels. Players must help the post office owner by dragging all of the items from the shelf that begin with a particular sound into the parcel. As with level 1 – when a player touches an item a recording plays telling them what that item is.

Level Three: The Toy Shop

Level 3 focuses on a particular set of phonemes / graphemes, consonant digraphs and vowel digraphs / trigraphs (as outlined in phase 3 of the letters and sounds programme). It is set inside the toy shop where Millie and Mike have to reassemble the puzzles – which have fallen on the floor. Each puzzle contains a picture and a word broken into 3 segments which need to be put back together in the correct order.

Level Four: The Art Gallery

Level 4 focuses on the same set of phonemes / graphemes etc as in level 3. The aim of this level is to help put together an exhibition in the art gallery by matching the appropriate picture with the word written in the frame.

Level Five: The Coffee Shop

Level 5 takes the form of a conversation between Millie and Mike and Mrs Chester, the coffee shop owner. Each sentence contains a missing word (All of the missing words have been taken from the DFES bank of suggested words and sentences for use in Phase Four of the Letters and Sounds programme). Players have to select the correct word from a choice of 4 to complete each sentence.

Level Six: The Library

Millie and Mike have to help the librarian sort out which books need to go on the shelf and which should go into the recycling. Some of the titles of the book names have misspelt words. These words are taken from the DFES bank of words for use in Letters and Sounds phase 5. The misspelt words demonstrate that there is more than one way to spell certain phonemes. It’s quite a challenging level drawing upon reading and decoding skills.

Level Seven: Conversation with Mum

In level 7 Millie and Mike have a short conversation with their Mum, in which they summarise what they have done throughout the day. This level focuses on the spelling rules and conventions associated with the past tense. There is a space next to certain words and players must drag the correct suffix to the word to complete the sentence.

For further info about the game please go to the apps section of our site: https://www.earlylearninghq.org.uk/apps/phonic-street/

We won’t have the app store url until launch day but we will be posting it on twitter and through our newsletter – which you can sign up to at the bottom of the screen.