These three things show your child what they can already do. They are switched on for families one at a time, so you may not see all of them yet. None of them shows your child a number, a score, a speed or anything to collect.
Listen, then read it again
This is for books written with only the letter sounds your child has been taught.
After your child reads a page aloud to Pip, the button to have another go says Listen, then read it again. Pip reads the page first, and then your child reads it back. They can do this up to two more times on a page.
Under the page, its words fill in with color as your child reads them without stopping. A word they stopped on stays as it was printed. It is never marked in red or crossed out, and a word that has filled in stays filled in.
Pip says "That sounded smoother" only when it did: the page had fewer stops than the time before and needed no more help. If it did not, or if Pip could not hear the page well enough to tell, Pip says nothing about it. Pip never talks about how fast your child read.
Reading a page again after hearing it read well is one of the best-studied ways to build smooth reading. What changes over the reads is how it sounds, so that is the only thing we tell your child.
My sounds
A My sounds tile on your child's home opens their path of letter sounds, in the order they are taught.
- The sounds your child has learned are lit.
- The sound they are learning now has a ring round it and You are here under it.
- Every other sound is drawn like a letter on a page. Nothing is locked, grayed out or hidden.
Tapping a sound plays it and shows words your child has read with that sound in their own books. A sound stays lit once it is lit, even when it comes back for another look in the word games.
My words
The second tab, My words, is a shelf of the words your child has read in their books, newest first. There is no count on it and nothing to fill.
"I can read" cards
When a letter sound becomes secure, we make one card for it, such as "I can read words with sh", with three words from your child's own books that they can sound out. Secure means your child has shown the sound in lessons and in writing, on different days.
- Your child sees the card when they tap that sound in My sounds.
- You see every card on your child's Progress page, under Sounds and letters, and can print them from there, four to a letter-size sheet. Printing happens on your device, and nothing is sent anywhere.
- A card is never taken away while learning is on. There is no set to complete, and nothing is unlocked by having more of them.
A card waits until your child's books have three words with that sound in them that use only sounds they have been taught.
What we keep
- My sounds and My words are built from what we already keep: which sounds your child knows and the words they have met in their books. Nothing new is stored to show them.
- "I can read" cards are kept only if you have turned on learning, and only once you have agreed to the version of our privacy notice that describes them. They are deleted when you turn learning off or remove the reader, and they are in your data export.
- Listen, then read it again uses the same page readings as reading to Pip always has. Once you have agreed to that version of our privacy notice, we also keep how many times the reading of each part of a page stopped, as one small number, so we can tell whether "That sounded smoother" is true. It is never shown to anybody as a number. We never keep your child's voice.
Turning them off
Turning off learning in your child's Reading settings deletes their cards and stops new ones being made. My sounds, My words and Listen, then read it again are switched on or off for everybody at once; if you would rather your child did not see one of them, write to us from the Help page.