WordBuilder™ is a scientifically-based, easy to use teaching tool that anybody can use to help children and adults of all ages learn to read and spell.

Created by reading specialist and speech-language pathologist Dr. Bartek Rajkowski, PhD, WordBuilder™ is a fun, intuitive and powerful means through which to learn how to use letter-sound patterns to crack the code in the English language.

WordBuilder™ is perfect for teaching beginning readers, students with reading difficulties and students learning English as a second language. The program will quickly become a favourite tool for anybody with an interest in the teaching of reading and spelling!

**Wow! Thanks for making WordBuilder™ the #1 Educational iPad app in Australia!**

PLEASE NOTE:
- WordBuilder™ is Australian! US/UK accents coming soon!
- Requires iPad 2 or higher

Which skills does WordBuilder™ help to teach?

Try reading this word: hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. How did you read it? Research suggests that we read unfamiliar words by converting letter patterns to speech sounds and then mentally joining the sounds to read the word. Competent readers self-teach by successfully decoding new words, while poor letter-sound knowledge and decoding ability are hallmarks of reading difficulties. This code-cracking skill has been shown through decades of research to be crucial in learning to read and spell. WordBuilder™ helps students learn the following code-cracking skills found through research to be vital in learning to read and write in English:


Grapheme Knowledge

Remembering letter-sound relationships. For example, the letter pattern “ay” represents the sound /ay/, like in “play”


Segmentation

Understanding how to break words up into individual speech sounds. For example, the word “cat” consists of the sounds /k/, /ae/ and /t/


Blending

Being able to join individual speech sounds together to make words. For example, joining the speech sounds /s/.../p/.../oo/.../n/ makes the word /spoon/


Decoding

Understanding how to read unfamiliar words by using letter-sound relationships. For example, if a student did not recognise the word “flight” when reading, they could say the speech sounds represented by the letter-sound patterns (/f/../l/../igh/../t/) and mentally join the speech sounds to read the word.


Encoding

Understanding how to spell unfamiliar words by using letter-sound relationships. For example, if a student did not know how to spell the word /play/, they could break the word up into separate speech sounds and spell the word based on letter-sound patterns (“p..l..ay”).


How do students use WordBuilder™?

WordBuilder™ gives students an easy way to experiment with making and reading words using the most common letter-sound patterns in English. Students can:

- tap on letter-sound patterns to hear the speech sounds they represent
- make words by combining these patterns
- slide a finger over the patterns in a word to hear the individual speech sounds in the word
- see an animation of a mouth which explicitly teaches students about the relationship between speech and written language
- move and replace letter-sound patterns by dragging and dropping them
- check to see if words they have made are correctly spelled


How do parents, teachers and reading specialists use WordBuilder™ to help students?

- build words with letter-sound tiles for the student to read, or you can say a word for the student to build
- change the selection of letter-sound tiles used in activities so that beginning students can practice with the most basic building blocks of written language while more advanced readers can learn less common patterns
- save letter-sound tile sets for later use
- an in-built memory-aid system helps students to remember letter-sound relationships. Once students begin to remember these relationships, the memory-aid system may be turned off so that students can begin to remember letter-sound patterns by themselves