10 Great Free English Phonics Apps

There are more than 10 great English apps on the Google Playstore and Apple App stores. Apps like Teach your monster to read and Phonics hop and pop are great but there are more options out there with out pay walls. Here we talk about 10 of them.

10 Great Free Phonics Apps

As we find ourselves once again headed online teachers are going to need some support. Sending home to parents some apps to help students learning are always going to help. Online learning is difficult and these free phonics apps help students both play and learn at the same time. They include:

• Phonics Hop and pop
• Swing Phonics
• Teach your Monster to Read
• Monkey Word School Adventure
• Fish School Letter Recognition
• ABC Spelling
• AR ABC
• Quiver Coloring App
• Zoo Kazam
• CVC Scramble and Blitz

The best we have found to date is teach your monster to read, but it is only free once or twice a year. There are other English Phonics Apps out there like Monkey Word School, which has a price. The best free ones, usually have advertisements or a pay wall. However there are plenty that great for use in a classroom or in homes. here are some to get you started.

Also I think it is worth mentioning that I am a teacher of English working in a primary school in Hong Kong at the moment and use these ones fairly regularly in my classrooms. So it is from experience I recommend and not any backhanders just yet!

Finally, sorry for going on a bit, These apps are for the most part pick up  and put down, and playable as a whole class. So many education apps now are walked up behind email forms, paywalls and progression these ones can be used to supplement a lesson or teaching point, and if they are mine I wrote them as a teacher who does just this, use them for a ten minute burst to highlight a point, no accounts, no work through till the end just pick up , play and put down.

Word Hop and Pop.

This app is great for picking up for 10 minutes and putting down. It can be used in classrooms on the whiteboard and as an app. It covers nice phonics and English topics in two games and is completely free to play. It covers , Phonetic sounds, CVC words, Blends, Vowels, syllables and more. I use this in my classrooms and it is always requested by students to play again.

It is one both Google and on Apple, as well as having a PC online version. As you can see it is a sound and word recognition game where students have to listen and jump to the correct word, or pop the bubbles / leaves.

Swing Phonics

This is a Google app and you can play online both for free. This is another great app for classrooms and homes. It follows the SATpIN order from Jolly phonics. It increases in difficultly introducing more and more difficult words as the student progresses. It has characters that students can choose and once it has been played through once, teachers and students can choose the sounds they wish to play. It is on google and playable here.

Teach Your Monster to Read.

Price: Free for a week or two each year. ( other wise about 5 USD)

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This, despite me being proud of my own apps, is the best English learning app out there. I can only dream of making something this good. It main focus is on phonics and word construction so is great for younger or ESL students. It is colourful, engaging and students will play for as long as they can get away with. It is on both Google and Apple

The gameplay consists of taking control of a monster who needs to fix his spaceship after a crash, ( space and monsters always a win) they travel around practicing the sounds of english, with both sound and letter recognition games that are as useful as they are fun. There is progression in the SATPNI order of phonics and sight words are included as mini games.

Students can sign up and play on their own, however i use it to create an account and hand to the students which enables a whole host of teacher benefits, including statistics, level, time played, posters and certificates of completion, and all manor of other rewards. these can be printed en masse and there has been serious thought into making it work in educational settings.

They also maintain a website that has mini games that can be played with a whole class as well as posters , images and wall decorations. I have included how i use some of it here.

For those of us teaching in less affluent areas it is free all the time on PC and free for a week or two each year on the app stores. Keep an eye open for it.

Monkey Word School Adventure

Price: 1.99 USD ( this is always paid but its worth mentioning)

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Monkey Word School Adventure is a fun engaging learning app on Google and Apple. It is designed to assist young learners practice phonics and word construction. The app is made of a collection of Mini-games that rotate and change at random. Monkey Word School Adventure presents the game in a lively and fun way, and both the games and the images will entertain children.

It is said to scale up and i can affirm i have noticed it get more difficult, it does allow multiple users, but only on the tablet or phone it is used on so for schools this may be a logistical issue and there is no website version that i have found.

Fish School – Letter recognition

Price: Free on Android and Apple ( Khan Academy had something to do with that)

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Duck Duck Moose make great looking apps and this is another example, it is clearly aimed at Kindergarten age and so may or may not have its uses in a primary or ESL classroom. However it covers alphabet ( annoyingly not the sounds just the letter names) , shapes, colours and odd one out in a series of interactive screens.

It is style over substance in my opinion but that style does make up for a lack of content or education purpose. Better for students or children to plan on their own instead of part of a lesson.

ABC Spelling-Spell and Phonics

Price: Free ( limited in app)

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This is on Goolgle and Apple. I like this one, it has content and functionality and most of it is not hided behind payments. It does have adverts but there were not too intrusive and , to me at least, the prettiness isn’t an issue as i want to use these in class so i don’t want the tantrums from the students when i ask them to stop.

It works, and although not any customisation options if you have a need to practice English in large groups this could be worth a look.

AR Flashcards

Price: free ( but some in app purchases)

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You could find worse ways to introduce the Alphabet than this app. It will be fun and engaging for young learners and definitely when i have used it, makes them want to do more. I have it as a ‘make your own alphabet zoo’ activity that is on teachers pays teachers ( for free i think) i do use my own app for this though. The animals are cute and work well within the app, for no dollars it is certainly worth exploring!

There is other content with in the app, dinosaurs, space, shapes etc. However some of this is hidden behind a paywall. They maintain a website so you can take a better look. it also has the AR triggers for download there as well as linked on their play-store pages.

Quiver Colouring App

Price: Free ( with some in app purchases)

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This is really a great app. In my teaching i have used it from P1 (6 years old) to P6 (12 year old) but there are uses beyond those age ranges as well. They have a family of applications under the Quiver brand including education, fashion and masks. I have used them for festivals and holidays for students to make their own interactive Christmas cards and for older students to put a fully working AR volcano into their project work, both highly effective.

On Google and Apple

The two i use most often are the education and general app, the photos show an couple of example of them, but there are many others. their website has the AR triggers to download for free, but check before you use them in the app to make sure the one you want is not pay-walled. ( not that much is)

Zoo Kazam

Price: Free for one of each animal (rest behind a paywall)

UPDATE I can’t find the free version on Android now. but here it is on Apple. ( still worth it btw)

Lastly, in AR at least us this beautifully made animal AR app, has 42 different animals in multiple categories. These include Dinosaurs, amphibians, mammals, fish and pets. Each animal comes with information as well as a well made 3d AR model. there are also two markers, so you can glue or stick to a wall and have the animals on the tables for as long as you need. As shown in the photos the two markers have different ways of presenting the animal and there is a photo mode in the app to take advantage of that.

It is also possible to use real world objects as markers and this enables you to put the animals all over the place, there is also a new Video mode in the app so you can record reactions or make little mini movies with it. I haven’t tried this as i use the Carlton books apps for the video side of things with my students, but it seems to be similar.

It can be used as an introduction to animals for younger learners and of course as a genuine resource and information bank for older learners.

It even has a polar bear which, lets face it, may be the only way to see one if we carry on like we are, and on that happy note we will leave AR behind.

CVC Word Scramble Phonics Play and CVC blitz

Price: Free and paid versions

here are on Apple and on Google. Simple English words are mixed up and children and students are asked to move the letters till they spell the words correctly. These words are all three letters and can be used to teach decoding and spelling strategies, including sounding out, picture recognition, phonics and onset and rime.

There are 4 versions included and these include

CVC Timed: a 60 second word game where the student tries to make as many words as they can in time. This allows classrooms with less
access to technology to take turns easier.

Pictures Round: CVC and three letter mixed up word game with pictures to help
visual learners. There is a 60 second limit to allow for turn
taking.

Apps are useful but they are merely a tool, not a curriculum. so with that in mind below is some information and links to play. where they are on both apps stores I will highlight that and if on line so you can play as a classroom I will mention that. As a spoiler that’s basically my apps and Teach Your Monster to Read, which is where i will start.

Post by Marc of Making English Fun