Every sound, in the right order.
Ready, Set, Reading! is a systematic phonics curriculum: 44 sounds introduced across 75 lessons, each one practised on its own, then in a word, then in a sentence. Nothing is guessed from a picture, and no word appears before the sounds inside it have been taught.
How a lesson works
Sound, word, sentence
Every lesson is built from the same three kinds of exercise, always in that order. The child reads aloud at each step and speech recognition tuned for children's voices checks what they actually said — so a lesson can't be completed by tapping through it.
Sound
A single letter or letter team on screen. The child hears it, says it, and speech recognition checks the sound they actually produced — not whether they tapped the right box.
sh
Lesson 25 Word
The word is sounded out one phoneme at a time, then blended. Nothing is memorised by shape — every word is built from sounds already taught.
shop
Lesson 39 Sentence
A full sentence using only the sounds and sight words the child has already met, so the first read is a success rather than a guess.
I walk to a shop.
Lesson 52
Scope & sequence
The 75-lesson arc
Five stages take a child from three sounds to connected text. The sample sentences below are real exercises, taken verbatim from the lessons they're labelled with.
Lessons 1–10
First sounds, first sentence
Children start with three sounds — m, a, s — and read a whole sentence before the end of Lesson 1. Every sound is practised on its own, then inside a word, then inside a sentence, so blending becomes a habit before it is ever a test.
New sounds
- m
- a
- s
- ē
- t
- r
- d
- i
- ea
- th
- c
I am sam
Read aloud in Lesson 1 Lessons 11–25
More vowels, more words
Short o and short u join the vowels already known, and the consonant digraphs ck and sh arrive — the point at which most ordinary English words become decodable. Sentences pass five words and start carrying real meaning rather than drill material.
New sounds
- o
- ck
- n
- f
- u
- l
- w
- g
- sh
the man is not on the mat.
Read aloud in Lesson 14 Lessons 26–40
Long vowels and letter teams
The macron the app introduced with ē in Lesson 2 now extends to ā and ō, so a child can see which sound a vowel is making instead of guessing at it. The vowel team oa, r-controlled ar, and the digraph ch follow, and sentences start carrying quoted speech.
New sounds
- ā
- h
- k
- ō
- v
- oa
- p
- ar
- ch
I said, “wē can gō on a ship in the lāke.”
Read aloud in Lesson 39 Lessons 41–55
Word endings and longer sentences
Short e finally arrives — deliberately after long ē, because ē unlocks more early words. The -ing ending, the er sound, and the last vowel teams turn a known root into a family of words, and sentences reach fifteen words with commas and several clauses.
New sounds
- e
- b
- ing
- ī
- y
- er
- oo
- ai
the girl, the cat, and the dog went in the fast car down the road.
Read aloud in Lesson 47 Lessons 56–75
Fluency and connected text
The remaining sounds fill in the gaps — j, wh, qu, x, z, the past-tense -ed, and y as a long ē. The emphasis shifts from decoding single words to reading connected text at pace: multi-clause sentences, dialogue, and the sight words that never followed the rules.
New sounds
- j
- ed
- wh
- ȳ
- qu
- x
- z
sō, bill and his brother walked the dog to the vet.
Read aloud in Lesson 62
Reading the page
Two things on screen that aren't in a normal book
A bar over long vowels
English spells one letter with several sounds, which is where most beginning readers stall. When a vowel is saying its long sound, the app draws a macron over it — ā, ē, ī, ō, ȳ — so lāke and gō can be decoded rather than guessed. The marks are a scaffold, not a spelling change, and the same words appear unmarked as reading gets stronger.
Blue words
Some words genuinely don't follow the rules. Those are printed in blue and taught by sight, so a child knows immediately not to try to sound them out. Blue words are introduced a few at a time, starting with I in Lesson 1.
- I
- the
- is
- a
- with
- little
- of
- to
- do
- said
- was
- has
- his
- look
- love
- some
- come
- walk
- talk
- girl
- there
- you
- they
- have
- other
- brother
- mother
- from
Start at Lesson 1.
Three sounds, seven exercises, and a full sentence read aloud. See how far your child gets on the first try.