When young children first learn how to read they learn individual sounds and how to blend them together into a word. For example, the word might is segmented into c-ar-t. Individual grapheme sounds such as c & t are written with a dot underneath and digraphs such as 'ar' are underlined to show children that those 2 letters work together to create one sound. These are called sound buttons.

I think it would be fantastic if there was a feature where you could apply sound buttons to words so that students can attempt to read a word before hearing it. Furthermore, it would be brilliant if children could click the sound buttons if they needed a reminder of what the grapheme sounds like. It would give them a chance to try and read the words before having the answer given to them.

So the word cart would come up. With the phonetic feature enabled the sound 'c' would have a dot underneath it, the sound 'ar' would be underlined and the sound 't' would have a dot underneath it. When the line underneath 'ar' is clicked then students would hear the sound ar.

I am a primary school teacher trained in Early Years as well as Primary school and Phonics and early reading is a specialty of mine.