Duck Duck Moose Reading

What the Duck Duck Moose Reading phonics app covers

Duck Duck Moose Reading is a phonics app for children aged roughly 3 to 7. It teaches letter sounds and early reading through a zoo-themed adventure, where a child feeds and plays with animals such as flamingos, monkeys and lions. A character called Milo leads the adventure.

The developer, Duck Duck Moose, LLC, says the activities are based on the Common Core State Standards for early reading. It also says the app was developed with an educator it names as Jennifer DiBrienza, PhD, from Stanford University, and tested in kindergarten classrooms. The company has won a Parents' Choice Gold Award and a Children's Technology Review Editor's Choice Award for the app, according to the listing.

The app is published under the Duck Duck Moose name and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Khan Academy, a nonprofit. The developer lists its category as Curriculum.

Letter sounds and recognising lowercase letters

The first group of activities covers the sounds that letters make. The developer says the app teaches the sounds for all consonants, short vowels and long vowels, using nine different activities across its word and letter games.

Other activities ask children to recognise and name lowercase letters, and to show that they know letter-sound pairings. A separate set focuses on isolating and pronouncing the sounds in consonant-vowel-consonant words, such as the short words a child first learns to decode.

Spelling is handled in its own activity. The developer says children practise building CVC words, which connects the single sounds they have learned to whole words.

Tracking progress for parents and teachers

The app includes a parent reporting tool. The developer describes it as a new feature that lets parents and teachers see how a child is progressing through the activities.

The report is the only part of the app the listing describes as meant for adults rather than the child. It shows progress across the letter-sound and word work, so an adult can see which skills a child has covered.

Who the app suits and how it is funded

The listing aims the app at young children in preschool and early primary school, and at the families and kindergarten teachers who support them. The developer names kindergarten classrooms as the setting where it was tested.

The developer says all of its Duck Duck Moose apps are free, with no ads and no subscriptions, as part of Khan Academy. The listing also points readers to the Khan Academy app for other school subjects from elementary level upwards.