Literature Apps
For centuries, educators and children have enjoyed spending time together reading or visiting the library. Now, with the abundance of children's literature apps, they also can take pleasure in those experiences virtually.
Literature apps offer exciting interactive versions of stories that are sure to engage children's interest and inspire in them a love of literature. Teachers looking for good books to share with students and parents interested in helping their children learn to love books at will find all the help they need at these apps.
Fact Mountain British Literature is an app designed to broaden readers' knowledge about classic works of literature. It covers both the content and the background to the book in a series of clues that begin in the obscure and gradually move towards the precise. How many clues will it take you to identify the book in question?
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
Nubba app is a Spanish audio service, directed at children, which gives you an alternative to managing screen abuse and addiction among minors. You can listen through hundreds of authentic Spanish audio content, from fairy tales to story series to radio broadcasts running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and three-hundred sixty-five days a year. The visuals complement the lovely, endearing stories that will keep you and your children enraptured and enthralled for hours upon end. You can select tracks to relax to, to stir the imagination, to help you learn, and to sing and dance the day and night away with your loved ones. Give Nubba a download to bring a little real-world Spanish fun into your home.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
BOOKVO is an app aimed at users wanting to learn the English language through real access to books and reading over a sustained period of time by practising a set amount each day. The app provides a library of content with lots of support throughout to engage learners and to encourage them to read regularly.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
* New version includes bonus classic short stories
* Featured by Apple in "New and Noteworthy"
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Devices: iPhone, iPad
Shakespeare™ is a free app with the complete works of Shakespeare (41 plays, 154 sonnets and 6 poems, including doubtful works) and a searchable concordance to find the exact word or phrase you’re looking for (with “relaxed” searching to find words close to your sear...
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
Make beautiful text collages with Visual Poetry. Type your text or phrase and watch it instantly arranged as a mosaic in a variety of shapes and styles. 24 symbols are included or you can draw you own shapes. Pinch and drag to resize and rotate individual words.
Devices: iPhone, iPad
STORYTELLER is an app that turns any book into a spoken book. By scanning in the pages of any book the app recognises the text and then turns this into speech so it can read aloud the words on the page. This allows users to scan in any book and then have the app read the pages out loud for whoever is listening. The app is very simple to use and it just requires access from the phone or tablets camera to be able to scan in the images. Once the user has gone through and scanned each page the apps AI abilities recognise, decode and then produce a spoken version of the book. The books is then kept in the library, accessible at any time for the user to access. In trialling this app I used a range of books, in terms of difficulty and amount of words on the page to see if it worked the same regardless of the complexity. I was pleasantly surprised to say that it did. I even tried articles from magazines or pages from a website and again it did. Understandably if the article or website had lots of blocks of text then it did struggle but if the text was in a linear form it managed this absolutely fine. The developers have suggested that this app works incredibly well for young children to have picture books scans in and then read back to the child but I also think the applications for the app go far beyond this too. The quality of the spoken AI is a lot better than many other apps and sounds more like a usual spoken voice than an electronically created one. The pauses and emphasis on certain words seem very genuine and natural too.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
ANTON is an app and online learning portal for students, parents and teachers to utilise. Linked to the curriculums of all the languages it caters for it is jam packed with learning. Boasting over 50,000 exercises it contains interactive elements, feedback, games and explanations all aimed at supporting young people to learn. The learning within the app/website covers English, maths, science, the arts and music following set lessons and learning with activities in each topic. With home learning and home schooling being a major factor in the education of children across the globe in the last couple of years this app/website takes advantage of this and uses all of the aspects we have become used to in blended learning to produce a learning platform that can be used anywhere, whether it be in the classroom or in the home. Users are able to select the subject that they wish to focus on and then follow a set of directed learning opportunities or lessons through a series of games. Parents and teachers are able to create classes, assign any homework that they wish and then track the learning progression of the users involved. This information can then be used to personalise any learning or to bridge the learning between school and home.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
Readmio is a wonderful app that provides short stories for children focusing on life lessons. This unique application responds to your words with sounds making the story a truly magical experience. Readmio provides stories to support the mental and emotional well-being of children as well as providing a positive attitude towards reading. This application is free from in-app adverts and has protected in-app purchases for access to the Readmio Library with over 200 stories. The application currently provides few free stories with updates every week. The application is available for Apple iOS and Android devices in both mobile and tablet formats. The app is supported by a developer’s website that includes links to news and features. It is noted that an internet connection is required for downloading the stories but not for reading them.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
Kurious is an app that has been developed to help young children gain a love for reading and to help improve their abilities within reading too. The app also apps to help young children become more independent in their reading as they progress through the available books. There is a large amount of content available through the app in the form of interactive books and there is a wide variety of topics and subjects to appeal to a wide range of readers. This isn't a phonics based app but an app that focuses on helping children to improve their reading by having access to good quality stories. There is a strong focus on enjoyment with the developer, on their own website, talking strongly about book selection and having a range of interest available to engage children into reading. This is a strong feature and ethos of the app.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
Vocabulary Upgrade II is an app that has been designed to help older children develop their language skills, including their spelling, comprehension and use of higher level words. The app uses a wide variety of learning experiences to help users maximise the content and opportunities for learning through games, tests and stories. The app introduces, explains and helps users become fluent in 80 frequently tested words and 70 frequently tested synonyms. The app also gives a range of support to aid in this learning, through audio pronunciations as well as a dictionary giving further information on the words themselves. The developers of the app have a number of other apps also aimed at the vocabulary market and so clearly specialise in helping children to extend their vocabulary skills. The developer also has a website with further information on all of their apps.
Devices: iPhone, iPad
SparkNotes is an app and website that provides study guides for literature, poetry, films, and more. You can download the SparkNotes app from Google Play Store or App Store.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
The Walking Classroom Podcasts' Science, Language, and Social Studies content is aimed at the US Grades of 3 to 8 which covers children aged 8 to 12. The podcasts are accessible on most devices with dedicated apps for Android and iOS devices and a web-based version for other platforms, including desktops. The app is free to download and comes with a selection of podcasts. The full content is unlocked by subscribing to the service.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
Learnie is a unique learning app that enables students and teachers to learn in a fun, fast and engaging way. The application provides micro-learning sessions on a variety of topics in short 30 second bursts including questions, dedicated subject specialists and high-quality video. The application is suitable for students 12 years and above and is free to download through the App Store and Google Play. The application is compatible with mobile and tablets devices and also has a wonderful dedicated web version.
Devices:
An extensive collection of fairy tales to browse.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
Revise at home, in class, or on the go with this question and answer app. Covering the majority of subjects in the GCSE, iGCSE and A Level exams, Gojimo tests and provides helpful hints too.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad
An easy to use Shakespeare app that explains key content to all Shakespeare’s plays as well as further information to extend anyone’s knowledge of the Bard.
Devices: Android, iPhone, iPad