Planet Lettra

Description

Planet Lettra is what Terry Heick has described as a “playful space” for word building experiments. In Planet Lettra, users build words by dragging letter-filled bubbles found in the sky above Lettra and bumping them together. Creatures on the planet surface slurp up bubbles dragged near them and react to these snacks by dressing up, playing a tune, spitting out letters or occasionally burping.

Kids can also travel into the belly of the planet and play with the real words they have already fed to the creatures. The words can arranged by hand or sorted in a variety of ways and then read at a speed controllable by the player. The app supports a number of voices in English (changed by tapping the bubble with a book that floats above Lettra).

Unlike other spelling apps, Lettra is an environment for experimenting with letters and word building that gently guides children in the spelling of real words rather than simply rewarding them for success in set spelling-related tasks.

The bubbles are “smart” letter blocks; when a single bubble is bumped into another, they only combine if the result is found at the start of a word Lettra “knows”, the number of which the user controls. Bubbles can also be combined two at a time, which lets users build and then hear anything they want, including funny, nonsense words.

“The idea for Planet Lettra came from watching my kids play with text-to-speech on our computer,” explains Studio Goojaji founder Greg McDonald. “They loved hearing the computer read words, real and nonsense, but struggled using a keyboard. This app lets kids enjoy the fun of the computer voice and gain exposure to the spelling of real words without the frustration of hunt-and-peck typing.”  Greg is a stay-at-home dad, former educator (ESL and science) and part-time app developer. This is his first app project.

Since the app relies on the text-to-speech engine built in to iOS devices, the reading for words is occasionally not what one would expect but proper reading of high frequency words and sensible reading of even made-up words make it easy to overlook this minor flaw. Also, some children find the sky over Lettra too busy and might like to control the number of bubbles the planet makes available. This could be added in a future update.

Planet Lettra attempts to do for phonemic awareness what the free play mode of Sleep Furiously does for grammar and sentence syntax. Kids can combine letters however they want or taking the environment’s hints and then get rich feedback related to spelling and phonics. Like many apps from Toca Boca (Toca Kitchen, Toca Hair Salon), Lettra could be described as a digital toy except than game characters are reacting to whether or not words are “real” (known spelling) rather than a given meal or hair style.

Teachers in early elementary grades and in special ed classrooms use Planet Lettra in a number of ways:

  • To scaffold teaching of phonics by encouraging students to form words that obey certain patterns (for example, consonant-vowel-consonant):  the environment can even be set to allow even nonsense words that obey this sort of rule to form readily by tipping the ring of Planet Permea all the way up. (Related to CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.1.3 Phonics and Word Recognition)
  • To stimulate curiosity about new words: by default, the environment favors high frequency words but kids quickly find that changing the tilt of the ringed-planet control (Planet Permea) makes all sorts of exotic, new words form. This often leads to discussion and inquiry about the meanings of those words.
  • To reinforce learning of vocabulary words by having students build them in Lettra, feed them to the creatures and them play with them in the planet belly.

Key Features:

  • “smart” letter bubbles hint at combinations leading to real words
  • words important to reading fluency (about 1000) are formed more easily and more often
  • bubbles containing known words live on in the belly of the planet where players can play with them again, change their order and have them read one after the other
  • creature reactions to invented spelling are funny and encourage risk taking
  • supports play in English, Spanish and French
  • recognizes over 100,000 words in each supported language
  • creature costumes and tunes change from word to word, so continued play brings new surprises
  • an early-reader-friendly narrated video “guided tour” is included with the app rather than text-based help
  • stress-free environment for experimentation and play: no looping music, scoring, levels, timers, buzzers, in-app purchases, advertising or external links

Pricing

Plan Price Details
Planet Lettra Word Building Playground $1.99 Paid mobile app. Volume pricing available for educational institutions.

Reviews

By
April 9, 2016

In the literacy classroom, iPads can be used for center activities, with small group instruction or in whole class activities. Planet Lettra is a word building app that helps students develop phonemic awareness. In this playful, interactive environment, students can freely experiment with word building. Letter bubbles float around the screen and guide players in building different words.   Planet Lettra provides support for emerging readers and the contents of any bubble can be read aloud on demand. Children will hear new words read automatically when real words…

Read more » Word Building App Planet Lettra: Strengthen Phonemic Awareness

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