To truly understand someone’s job you have to stand in their shoes before you can empathise fully.

If you’re a teacher – the nation has more empathy for you in these challenging times than ever before. As parents across the country struggle to keep their children motivated and fulfil a role they’re not trained to do – yours. Teaching through lockdown.

But at Fonetti, you’ve been in our thoughts personally as well as professionally.

We know that many of you are parents too. And just like others juggling full-time work with childcare and home-schooling, you’ve got more than your fair share of the workload.

So how are you coping?

Be honest, we’re all friends here and it’s ok to feel overwhelmed. It’s ok to feel anxious about not recognising the workplace that you love when you can welcome your pupils back into class again, whenever that may be.

You face what feels like an impossible task of creating a ‘new normal’. Rules and social distancing strategies that you’re under pressure to implement first so that other sectors can follow.

Right now, you’re probably doing more than you ever signed-up to do. But you’re doing it because teaching is more than a job to you, it’s a vocation. You care about the children in your care and are committed to supporting your school family.

We appreciate the juggle you face daily – planning lessons and distance-learning, calling parents to offer support and being strong for your colleagues. While all the time feeling guilty that you can’t fully commit your time to the classroom in your own living room, for your own children.

Time is a luxury

You have the skillset to your advantage – home-schooling is your forte.  But time is against you. You’d love to have the time to sit and listen to your children read. To check their pronunciation, know which words they’re finding tricky and hear their progress first-hand. 

So, what if we told you, you can – without needing to clone yourself in the process? It’s all thanks to one little word: Fonetti.

The reading assistant at home

Fonetti listens when you can’t. When you’re working from home, running a house and supporting a classroom of 30+, Fonetti gives your children the freedom to read without you.

Aloud and independently.

Approved by the Department for Education’s Hungry Little Minds campaign, as a platform for children to practise their reading, Fonetti is the world’s first listening bookshop. It’s a world of stories, fun and fiction that helps build confidence through encouragement and rewards.

It’s a reading revolution.

And right now, it’s the reading assistant available to every home and is the technology behind interactive reading.

How does it work?

Imagine reverse Karaoke, for speech rather than song. Children choose a story and start reading aloud. When they get the words right, they turn green. If they get stuck, they double tap for help. When they finish a book, they win rewards, instant praise and improve their literacy in the process.

Fonetti also keeps parents, like you, up to date with what your children are reading. You’ll receive regular weekly updates that tell you:

• how long your child has read for
• which stories they’ve read
• the number of times a book has been chosen
• and what words they’ve struggled with.

It also tells you when they’ve reached a new reading level.

Establish an easy reading routine

Routine during lockdown has had its challenges – many caused by the calendar. Easter holidays, May bank holidays and the recent half term break have been difficult for children to accept. Their location hasn’t changed and, for many, going ‘back to school’ simply means swapping their PlayStation for their pencil case without even leaving their sofa.

Although the holidays may signal a well-deserved break to your working week, they attract all the risks of routine-rebellion as your children may find it hard to focus after a break. Fonetti provides a fun, independent and disciplined reading routine, regardless of term-time.

Socially-distant stories

Reading isn’t necessarily a social activity. It can be enjoyed as much as a solitary pastime as it can in a group so you could say it’s the ideal activity for a socially-distant classroom. With the potential changes to the academic landscape, 1-2-1 reading assistants may be postponed for some time.

And teaching resources, particularly classroom assistants, will be inevitably stretched. Fonetti offers a lifeline to literacy, a world of escapism and structured support to every school.

Developed with linguistic professors at the University of Edinburgh, Fonetti can recognise readers speaking English as a second language, those with dyslexia and SEN. It also offers teachers insightful analytics that reduce the average workload.

With Fonetti you can say goodbye to traditional book logs. Instead you can keep up to date with the progress of every child in your class with one simple click. 

We don’t just want to stand in your shoes. We want to take the weight off your feet. To give you some valuable time back, to make managing your classroom – wherever it may be – that little bit easier. And most importantly, so that reading aloud isn’t relegated because of restrictions.

We can’t control all the things our younger generation are missing out on at the moment. But we can ensure that reading isn’t one of them. Drop us a line  to start using Fonetti with your class.

Reading aloud should be fun – not feared

As a parent you can remember your own experience of assemblies, school plays and classroom reading. How did those experiences shape your adult life?

Reading aloud is a life-skill. Presenting to an audience and being able to communicate confidently is not only valuable academically but personally too. It helps us with exams, job interviews and gives us reassurance just re-reading documents for clarity on a daily basis.

Anxiety builds quickly and a bad experience at school, for a shy child, can have a huge impact on their adult life. But there’s one word that can stop fear in its tracks: Fonetti.

Mum of three, Kelly Williams explains:

“Freddie’s always been a shy little boy – he loves school, don’t get me wrong, but he’s quite happy to let others put their hand up and take the lead. Having an older brother and sister, he’s used to others speaking for him in one way.

My husband and I thought school would help him come out of his shell a little and weren’t worried about his school work until he had to learn lines for his school assembly. I’ll never forget how he came home in bits. He knew the words and could read them to himself but just struggled to say them aloud – even to his big brother. So, we tried to find him some help and thankfully found Fonetti.

After just two days of using the app, something changed. It was as if he’d found his voice for the first time and would take himself off to the sofa to read but aloud. I remember us both putting shopping away in the kitchen and hearing Freddie’s voice in the living room as he read. 

I’ll be honest, it made me a bit emotional…but watching him in his school play a week later made me even more. I couldn’t have been prouder. His voice didn’t boom like the other kids but he said his lines out loud without a wobble and with a smile. We’ve not doubt that was helped by Fonetti.”

Many parents feel guilty for using screen-time. They believe it will make their children anti-social, damage their eyesight and lure them away from traditional methods of learning.

But feelings of guilt should actually be replaced by gratitude. Screen time can enhance learning rather than hinder it.

Just as the world is changing rapidly, so are the perceptions of screen time.

In fact in their The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health 2019 screen time study shows that social media has more of a negative impact on an individual rather than the use of the device itself.

They recommend that screen time use with digital devices should be made on a case-by-case basis within families rather than a general limit based on age.

We’re the world’s first listening bookshop.

And we’re the only platform that listens to children while they read, that recognises their speech regardless of dialect, accent or native tongue.

You could say, at the moment, we’re the teaching assistant available to every home and the technology behind interactive reading.

And we’re building confidence on an hourly basis…or however long your children choose to interact with us.

Screen time is a personal choice.

The results of screen time resources are fact. Using some of your child’s screen time allowance on Fonetti will benefit them more than playing on their games console.

It still entertains, feeds their imagination and gives them valuable life-skills as well as nurturing a love of reading.

We’re sharing this experience together.

The fears, the frustrations, the pain. The pride, the gratitude and the love. We’re sharing our space, our time and our skills. We’re sharing our screens. We’re sharing our stories.

And there has never been a better time: #Fonetti