Lots of the kids in my class have trouble learning phonics, and for good reason! It’s not an easy skill to learn, and can be difficult to practice without someone on hand to correct pronunciation. Meanwhile learning phonics is (as far as I know) the best way to learn how to read which is (as far as I know) one of the most fulfilling things a person can do with their day.

To help my students practice at home, I made a website where they can click on a phoneme and listen to the pronunciation.

Additionally, added a quiz mode that will play a sound, and allow them to click on the corresponding card.

After they run through the quiz, they get a little certificate that they can show their parents (or teachers) and the site will let them practice any sounds they might have missed.

Coding the site was a lot of fun. It was the second programming project that I undertook in conjunction with ChatGPT, which had some useful advice for how to handle some of the audio issues I ran into.

For anyone interested in looking at the code, feel free to check out the github repo. I recorded the audio myself using audacity, and the phonics cards themselves were made by my colleague Andrew.