Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

What is All Aboard Phonics?

What is the research behind All Aboard Phonics?

What are pictophones?

Do you have a reading intervention?

Questions for Teachers/Online Account Issues

What is included in Premium membership?

What is the difference between the UK, USA and Australian versions of AAP?

How does the app work alongside the curriculum?

Quick tour of the LMS

How do I log into my LMS account?

How do I add an administrator?

How do I add a facilitator to a class team?

How do I add or transfer learners?

How do I add a parent to a learner account?

How do I mark a class team as Premium?

How do I run an online assessment?

How do I make sense of the assessment data?

How do I set books for the learners to read on the app?

How can I see what my learners are doing on the app?

How do I create a dummy account to test things out?

How do I access the digital library on the app?

How do I use the Trainertext Creator?

How do I use the trainertext flashcards?

How do I use the reread technique to boost fluency?

Questions for Parents

How do I accept an invite from my child’s school?

I have not received an email from my child’s school

General Questions

What is All Aboard Phonics?

All Aboard Phonics is a complete systematic, synthetic phonics curriculum for the early development of reading skills. It covers the first 2-3 years of formal phonetic instruction, plus an optional preschool curriculum. It is fully validated as an SSP by the UK DfE, and it undergoing validation in several American states/districts.

The curriculum includes daily lesson plans in our teacher manuals, worksheets for the learners, flashcards, posters, a reading intervention, plus 57 decodable books that children actually want to read! There is also a free All Aboard App for home reading practice.

What is the research behind All Aboard Phonics?

Our research is based around understanding the causes of reading difficulties that we have seen in our intervention work of 15 years. We have a unique depth of knowledge in the area of reading intervention, based around neurology, linguistics, morphology, educational psychology, neuropsychology, and more.

The All Aboard Phonics curriculum was created as a process to avoid difficulty for every child before it develops. Our intervention can be used for any struggling learner, whatever aspect of learning to read is difficult for them. Learn more about our Research Basis here.

What are pictophones?

Pictophones teach reading the way the brain wants to learn: through successful practice. A pictophone is simply a visual representation of a sound that helps a learner segment and blend a word. It was created as a backlash against three-cueing, balanced literacy or whole word reading systems. Pictophones are ideal for visual learners, dyslexics, beginners, or struggling readers.

Each image represents a single sound in the English language. For example, the Toad About to Explode represents the /t/ sound. 

Do you have a reading intervention?

All Aboard Phonics Plus is our intervention curriculum, designed to identify the cause of difficulty for a child and apply the right solution each time. It includes baseline assessments and end-of-stage assessments to help you guide each learner through to a positive outcome.

Questions for Teachers/Online Account Issues

What is included in Premium membership?

Premium includes:

  • Online assessments
  • Data tracking (assessments and app)
  • PowerPoint/IWB lessons
  • Digital library access for your pupils
  • Our Trainertext Creator tool
  • Our Phonics Play Zone
  • Phonics Review Workbooks for each Premium Year 1 pupil (phonics screening check prep, value £8 each)

What is the difference between the UK, USA and Australian versions of AAP?

The USA and Australian versions of the phonics curriculum differs in the handwriting and print fonts used in the resources. Otherwise, they are identical. 

How does the app work alongside the curriculum?

The app delivers a daily home reading practice lesson that is not directly connected to the daily lesson plan, since there is no guarantee that learners will log on every day. The app presents an accelerated phonics progression that can be started at any time. 

Everyone starts on Session 1 of the app, even if they are on a later phase of AAP, which means they will start off with Phase 2 phonemes and graphemes. We do this to ensure every learner is familiar with all the pictophones and is confident with the basics before proceeding to the higher levels. Think of it as helpful review and consolidation material!

From the end of Phase 4 the app goes into a free flow of lessons. It does not try to follow the Phase 5 classroom lesson sequence. The reason is that the trainertext presentation of the words allows the children to work through the GPC variability in Phase 5.

Quick Tour of the LMS

How do I log into my LMS account?

How Do I Add an Administrator?

How do I add a facilitator to a class team?

How do I add or transfer learners?

How do I add a parent to a learner account?

How do I mark a class team as Premium?

How do I run an online assessment?

How do I make sense of the assessment data?

How do I set books for my learners on the app?

How can I see what my learners are doing on the app?

How do I create a dummy account to test things out?

How do I access the digital library on the app?

How do I use the Trainertext Creator?

How do I use the trainertext flashcards?

How do I use the reread technique to boost fluency?

Questions for Parents

How do I accept an invite from my child’s school?

Your school should have sent you an invite for the app by email. If that has been done, follow the directions in the email to link your home account to your school learner account.

I have not received my email from my child’s school.

No worries! If you know your school has invited you but the email has gone missing, just use the registration form on the Login/Register page to create an account with the email address that the school has on file for you. When you log into your account, the invite will be waiting for you.