To Develop a Software Application to Help Improve Key Stage One (KS1) Children's Phonetic

Skills

By

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My thanks go out to all who have helped me complete this study and with whom this project may have not been possible. In particular, my gratitude goes out to friends, facilitator and family for extensive and helpful comments on early drafts. I am also deeply indebted to the authors who have shared my interest and preceded me. Their works provided me with a host of information to learn from and build upon, also served as examples to emulate.



DECLARATION

I, [names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

Signed __________________ Date _________________



ABSTRACT

The thesis is subject to explain the software application development for educating the Key Stage One (KS1) students about the phonics skills. The application of Phonics has encompassed itself with the selection of various interactive activities that helps the children in identifying sounds, letter blends and individual letters. The main objective of this software application is to help the early age students that are at initial stages of reading or are facing difficulties in reading. The software helps the student in enhancing the reading proficiency of early stage learners and makes them understand about the fundamentals of reading. The reading activities that have been incorporated within the software application are mainly supported by the proven learning techniques that are well established in their nature for optimizing the learning effectiveness. The software application has been mainly produced in order to help the young children with their reading practices. The choice of development approach for the software application has been based on the characteristics of the software being developed. These characteristics include the ease of navigation, the high level of the interactivity, different elements of multi media that enable the readers to get know about the phonetic language both audibly and visually and the depth and quality of various kinds of audio visual effects that are to be contained within the design of the software. By taking into account these characteristics of the software, the application has been developed named as VB 6.0.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

ABSTRACTIV

Background1

Aim3

Objectives3

System objectives3

Report objectives3

Deliverables3

Research deliverable3

System deliverable4

Report objectives4

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY5

Introduction5

Selecting a methodology5

SDLC (System Development Life Cycle)5

Features of my project5

Rad6

Rapid Application Development (RAD)6

The methodology6

Software Development8

Drag and Drop9

Testing Prototype 19

Prototype 29

Augmentation from Prototype 110

Prototype 2 expansions10

Prototype 310

Prototype 410

Quiz Generation11

Final Artifact11

CHAPTER 4: CRITICAL EVALUATION12

Reflection on Achievements Related to Aims & Objectives12

Value of Deliverables12

General Strengths & Weaknesses13

Commercial Value14

Future Work & Recommendations14

BIBLIOGRAPHY16

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This dissertation examines and assesses the implementation of a software application for coaching children's Key stage one (KS1) phonic skills. The first part of the thesis provides an overview displaying the key contributions of academic scholars through research undertaken concerning the stimulus behind the phonetic applications development, a concrete assessment was undertaken, constituting of an examination of the methodical approach in order ...