Startup Fonetti is calling on businesses to help put interactive reading into the hands of 200,000+ children.
The Fonetti app listens to children as they read aloud. It encourages them by turning the words green – in real-time – when they get them right, and greying them out when the word is spoken incorrectly or missed.
It then rewards them with fanfares, stars and badges when a book is completed and keeps a log of reading time and accuracy, constantly encouraging the child to expand their reading list.
The Department for Education approved app is already being used extensively in schools and at home.
Its Schools Sponsorship campaign for businesses starts from just £595 and provides an annual subscription to its school portal, letting teaching staff monitor pupil progress and allowing them to allocate limited resources where most needed.
Teachers can allocate books to whole class cohorts or individual children. The teacher dashboard then provides information, at a glance, on class and individual reading time and accuracy.
The Schools Sponsorship package offers businesses measurable and reportable results, and provides resources including social media assets and ready-to-use graphics.
Once a package is decided and a school nominated, the Fonetti team do the rest, liaising with the school on behalf of the sponsor.
One business that is looking to sponsor a local school is Motivates, the incentive and reward experts.
“COVID has had such a negative impact on schools and children’s education has suffered as a result,” said Chairman Bill Alexander. “At Motivates, we wanted to support our local community including less well-off schools, assisting teachers in being able to help their pupils in catching up.
“Supporting the Fonetti Schools Sponsorship programme totally fits our ethos of ‘business should be a force for good’ and helps us work towards becoming a B-Corp business.”
Fritwell Primary School in Oxfordshire is just one of the schools now benefiting from Fonetti, having been sponsored by Snorer.
“Fonetti has been a wonderful gift for us,” said Headteacher Jonathan Hart. “It has enabled children to access high-quality, engaging texts and see how accurately they can read.
“The books they read can be tailored by the class teacher who can get immediate feedback on the children’s performance, and the children love it too.”
Auris Tech, the company behind Fonetti, has committed to sponsoring an additional school for every three external sponsors that sign up to the campaign.
“Help with children’s reading has never been more needed. It is anticipated that 200,000 children, due to leave school in July, will not reach their expected level for reading for their age – a terrible situation,” said Fonetti and Auris Tech CEO Kim Antoniou.
“Sponsoring a local school with a year’s access to the Fonetti App and Schools reading platform could really help in addressing this.
“The education sector is an extremely popular choice for many CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) programmes. Providing an annual schools subscription can prove to be a ‘hand in glove’ fit, especially where a company’s employees have already been used to going into schools as volunteers, in order to sit alongside children and listening to their reading, for example.”
You can find more information on the Fonetti Schools Sponsorship package at: www.fonetti.com