A few weeks ago, we joined the Kahoot! family, and today we’re happy to announce our first big news together. We’re launching a UK English version of Poio! You can already download it from the App Store or Google Play.
How Poio works
The Poio method is a gamified approach to teaching phonics, where children are in charge of their own learning journey. Phonics focuses on developing an ability to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds (phonemes) in order to teach how they correlate with letters.
We’ve successfully implemented this method in Norwegian and Swedish to help over 100,000 children to learn to read, and are now bringing it to the UK with some unique new additions.
Our game provides an immersive learning experience for children aged 3-8, taking them on a journey in a magical world of letters and words. They’re guided by a troll named Poio to discover how sounds are linked to written letters and to actual words that learners collect on their journey. The main goal of the game is to complete a story book step by step, and read this book to their parents, siblings or friends.
Poio puts children in control of their learning
In a safe and secure environment, learning with Poio is based on play and encouragement, rather than pinpointing mistakes, with the game adjusting to each child’s reading level. The amount of challenges they get makes the experience dynamic, challenging and motivating.
“Poio has really sparked my son’s love for reading! Now, whenever I’m alone with the children, Tobias offers to read a book for his siblings in the evening,” says Tonje, mother of 7-year old Tobias, one of 100,000+ Scandinavian children who learned to read with Poio.
Now, we’re hoping to spark love for reading in millions of kids in the UK and beyond!
Bringing Poio experience to UK English
According to recent stats from the Department for Education in 2018, 1 in 5 children in the UK left primary school unable to read or write properly. Sadly, many school systems around the world don’t support students who might take a longer time to grasp the principles of reading, or those who learn in different ways. Our goal at Poio is to make sure that children, regardless of their background and learning pace, have access to a solution that works for them, making them more engaged in the school curriculum.
To adapt the Poio fairytale to the English audience, we teamed up with a UK-based children’s author Claire Barker. We were truly charmed by her work! She embraced our values and quickly grasped the essence of the game experience, which resulted in a really captivating improved story.
More than 200 families in the UK kindly agreed to help us test Poio with their children. Over several months, they shared their experiences, posted videos of their children playing, and helped us identify areas for improvement. Thanks for your invaluable input!
Together with our community of testers, and with help from speech therapist Julie Davies, we made sure that Poio features the correct UK English pronunciation throughout the entire game experience. Birmingham-born sound designer Dan Wakefield recorded and produced voiceovers with five children, and cast narrator Andrew Raymond Barnes as the voice of the troll.
Now, you can see the result of this work – download the UK English version of Poio in the App Store or Google Play! We’re looking forward to hear what you think.
Using Poio in Norwegian or Swedish? Get the UK English version for free!
Just follow these easy steps to access the UK English version of Poio:
- Update Poio on your Android or iOS device to the latest version;
- Create a new user profile;
- Change language settings to English for this new profile;
- Voila! Poio is all set to help your children learn UK English.
Later this year, we’re planning to release a US English version of Poio – stay tuned!
