I taught Kindergarten classes all over the world for more than 20 years.
I discovered very quickly, as soon as children recognise the alphabet and common words, they begin to make enormous progress in reading and writing.
Unfortunately most teachers just hope this will happen - and many children do not recognise the alphabet and common words just by reading lots of basic books. Without intervention, these children can take years to recognise the alphabet and common words.
After I'd been teaching for a few years, I started making personalised sets of letter and word flashcards for children who weren't learning them just by reading basic books. This was very effective, but it took a lot of time to maintain them, particularly keeping track of which specific cards each child was working on.
I had learned how to make web pages, and I had an idea to turn my cardboard flashcards into a flashcards web app which could automatically keep track of which cards each student was focusing on. I made my flashcards web app using PHP and MySQL.
I soon discovered that my flashcards web app made an enormous difference for some children. I made many new sets of flashcards.
I often asked for parent volunteers to come and use the flashcards web app with the children. At one school my class had an older buddy class, so I arranged for small groups of the older children to use the flashcards web app with my children throughout the week - my class made very fast progress that year!
I discovered that there were still some children who made very slow progress. However, if I adjusted the program to only give them a very few new items at a time (2 or even just 1) they started to make steady progress too. I never taught a child who my flashcards web app couldn't help!
The app saved all the children's results, so they could see their progress over time.
When there were a lot of results in the database, I was able to use data science to look for patterns so I could improve the flaschards web app. For example, when a child finished a set of flashcards, the app started a "review cycle" - the child would review that set periodically. However when I queried the data I noticed the "review cycle" was only useful if the child had taken at least a few rounds to learn that set in the first place, so I changed the app so that if a child got a whole set of flashcards correct the first time, he or she didn't need to waste time reviewing that set.
When I taught in Qatar I had a girl in my class called Maryam, who had severe learning and behaviour needs. She was 8 years old, but she was academically a long way behind the rest of the class - she didn't recognise most numbers or letters. She was also very disruptive! Her special needs teacher told me not to expect Maryam to make much progress. I started Maryam on my flashcards web app, just giving her 1 new item at a time. We went over her flashcards every single day, and she started to make gradual progress. By the end of the year, Maryam was reading - her teachers and parents were amazed.
I am very proud of what I achieved with my flashcards web app!
