For schools

Teacher guide

Running a Poppins Learning block

Written for whoever runs the block: the classroom teacher, the aide, the interventionist, or the reading specialist. It covers what happens in the first session, what an adult does while a session is running, the headsets and devices every student needs, how the practice fits into a week, and what a teacher can and cannot change.

Poppins Learning is supplemental practice. It runs alongside the reading instruction and specialist support a student already receives, and it changes nothing about those services.

Who it is for

How far does the content go?

The library	covers Kindergarten through 4th-grade level content. There is nothing above the top of that range and nothing below the bottom of it, which is worth knowing before you pick a cohort.
A student’s grade	decides only where the app starts looking for their level, and from there it can only ever correct downward.

If you are running intervention in middle or high school, that is the fact to hold on to. An older student works inside the same library, at the level their own skills put them at, and the reading passage they are given at the start comes from the top of that range rather than from their grade.

Can a student who cannot read at all use it?

Yes. They are placed at the easiest level the app has, which is Kindergarten-level content. That is also the first level of the library: a student who gets everything wrong at the easiest level is still placed there, because the library has no level below it. Expect that student to find the work hard from the first day, and tell us about them.

We have students older than that. Does it still work?

Mechanically, yes. Grade sets the highest starting level, never the lowest, so an older student who reads well below grade level is placed exactly where a younger student with the same skills would be. After placement, the program moves on mastery rather than on grade.

Does Poppins Learning replace the support a student already gets?

No. It runs alongside the reading instruction, intervention, and specialist support a student already receives, including anything written into an IEP or a 504 plan. Nothing about adding this practice block changes those services, the minutes a student is owed under them, or who delivers them. Schedule the block around them rather than over them, and keep everything that is working.

Is there a minimum attention span or reading level?

A student needs to be able to sit with a headset and work through one session at the standard length. Beyond that, no minimum reading level applies. The placement step exists precisely to find whatever level the student is at.

The first session

What happens in the first session?

The app runs a placement step. It works through four areas in order:

decoding, which opens with a word-matching task and is the first thing you will see a student doing
phonological awareness, which is working with the sounds inside words
spelling
reading comprehension, which is a short passage

Each area is worked through separately, and a student can land at a different level in each one.

What this is, and what it is not. This is a placement step, and its only job is to choose where in the program each student starts. It is not a screener, not a diagnostic, and not a normed assessment, and it produces nothing you should use for eligibility, referral, tiering, or progress-monitoring decisions. It does not tell you whether a student has dyslexia, and it does not replace anything your school already uses to answer that question. Treat it the way you would treat a placement quiz at the front of a workbook.

Why do the first questions look so hard?

Because the step deliberately starts at the top of what a student’s grade allows and walks down. The first items a student sees are the hardest ones they will be offered, and for a student who needs easier material they are meant to be too hard. That is how the app finds the real level instead of assuming it.

Two things soften it, and both are worth knowing before you sit next to a child.

Each of the four areas opens with a tutorial item that always succeeds, so nobody starts on a failure.
The student loses nothing by getting early items wrong: there is no score, no penalty, and a wrong answer is what moves them to easier work.

It also moves fast. A student who needs easier material reaches it in roughly one to two minutes per area.

What happens for a Pre-K, Kindergarten, or 1st-grade student?

For that group the highest starting level and the first level are the same, so the placement step confirms the starting point rather than finding it. A student who passes everything and a student who passes nothing both come out at the easiest level.

This matters most for exactly the students you are most likely to be sitting next to. If you watch a first grader struggle through it and conclude that the step has decided something about them, it has not. Their result was the easiest level before they started.

What should I say to the student beforehand?

Something close to this: “The first few are going to be too hard on purpose. That is how it finds the right level for you. Just try them and keep going.” Then leave them to it. Do not coach, do not supply answers, and do not repeat the instructions for them, because a helped answer places the student too high and makes every session after it harder.

What does the roster have to contain before we launch?

A grade for every student. Grade is a required roster field, not an optional one, because it sets the highest level the placement step may start at. A student who arrives without a usable grade starts from the 2nd-grade level rather than from their own, so an ungraded or alternative enrollment starts harder than it should.

This catches more students than it sounds like on a district roster. An enrollment published as ungraded, or carrying a code the system does not recognize, is treated as having no grade at all, so those enrollments arrive as a group rather than one at a time. Fix them in your own student information system before launch week, not in the app, and tell us which students you corrected. If your school corrects a grade later in the year, the app picks the correction up at that student’s next sign-in. A school that sets up its own list chooses each student’s grade in the teacher portal when it adds them, so every student arrives with one.

During a session

What is my job while a session runs?

Monitor, do not instruct. Headset on, volume up, sit nearby, then leave them to it. No coaching, no worksheets on top, no explaining the game. The app decides what comes next, and an adult stepping in changes what it sees.

What does a session actually look like?

A session is a run of short activities the app picks for that student, played on the device with the headset on. It mixes rhythm activities, which ask the student to listen and respond in time to a spoken cue rather than to read something on screen, with reading activities that cover the same ground the placement step walked through: word reading, the sounds inside words, spelling, and short passages. Some activities ask the student to speak into the microphone.

The app chooses the order for each student, so the running order changes from one student to the next. To see the games before your first session, watch the short clips on the games page.

Do students really need headphones?

Every student needs their own headset: headphones with a working microphone, one per child. The listening tasks need headphones in a room with other people, and some activities ask the student to speak into the microphone. Count them before launch week and tell us if you are short, because buying more takes weeks.

The app records my students’ voices. What exactly happens to that?

What is recorded.	A short voice recording of the student’s spoken response, captured when they complete a pronunciation exercise.
Why.	The recording is scored so the app can give the student reading feedback and choose what comes next. The analysis produces a number and text feedback, nothing else.
How long it is kept.	Recordings are deleted automatically, and sooner after a verified deletion request from your district. The schedule we commit to is written in our privacy policy.
What it is never used for.	Advertising of any kind, and they are never sold.
The paperwork.	This is collected under the school consent your district gave when it signed with us. The binding terms are in your district’s signed data privacy agreement and in our privacy policy, not on this page. Send us any privacy question from a teacher or a parent and we answer it in writing.

Rhythm and scheduling

How long is a session, how often, and for how long?

20 minutes per session
3 sessions a week, which is 60 minutes a week
across the 12 weeks of a pilot

Fix those slots in the timetable before the pilot starts and keep them there for the whole of it. The end-of-pilot read is only ever as good as the rhythm behind it.

Can we do more days a week than we agreed?

Talk to us first. There is room above the agreed dose, and the app itself holds a ceiling on how much a student can do in a day and in a week. But more than the agreed sessions is not what a pilot measures, and changing the dose part way through makes the end-of-pilot read harder to interpret.

Following progress

Where do I see how my students are doing?

Sign in to the Poppins Learning teacher portal at teachers.poppinslearning.io. The app records the practice on its own, and the portal lays it out for you:

if you teach more than one class, the Overview, with this week’s practice for each of them
a page for each class, with each student’s practice day by day
a page for each student, with their practice and the games they played
the weekly report, which you can print or download as a spreadsheet

The next answer covers the written report we send you.

What will a progress read actually tell me?

You get a short written report every four weeks (at week 4, at week 8, and at week 12), written by a person, not generated. It carries usage:

how many weeks each student hit the agreed practice target
how many days they practised, and how many minutes
where each student has reached in the program
and anyone whose seat was never opened, by name, which is the one thing worth chasing early

It is a usage read, not a reading score. It does not tell you whether a child’s reading has improved, and we will not pretend otherwise. Reading itself is measured through the pilot’s pre and post questionnaire and whatever measures your school already runs. The pre-questionnaire has to be completed for every student before anyone runs a single session, because it cannot be reconstructed afterwards.

Will you tell us a percentage?

A mid-pilot percentage of progress or improvement is not something we report, and you should question anyone who hands you one. Pulled part way through, a number like that reads as failure even when a school is doing everything right. What we report in writing while a pilot runs is weeks on target and minutes per student, which are true at any point. The share of right answers that the teacher portal shows for the reading games is in-game accuracy, not a measure of how a child’s reading has changed.

Accounts and devices

How do my students get accounts?

A school that sets up its own list.	Your school admin adds your classes, teachers, and students in the Poppins Learning teacher portal, then prints a login card for each student, with a teacher’s copy of the same logins for your class binder. Each card carries the student’s first name, class, username, and password. Hand each student their card at the first session. An adult types the login the first time, as the card says.
A school on a district roster.	Your students and teachers arrive through the roster your district connects, and everyone signs in with the school account they already use. The account is created at that first sign-in.
A lost card.	A student who forgets their card signs in from your teacher’s copy. Poppins Learning keeps no copy of student passwords, so a lost card means a new password. Open the student’s page in the teacher portal to give them a new password, or ask your school admin to print a new card from the Students page. The old password then stops working, on the old card and on your teacher’s copy.

We are on Chromebooks, or another centrally managed fleet.

Poppins Learning is a native app from the App Store and Google Play, and it does not run in a web browser. A Chromebook runs it once your IT team turns Google Play on for the student organizational unit and allows or installs the app. On a managed device, your IT team installs the app, so plan the install with them before launch week. Windows laptops and desktops, and Mac computers, are not supported. The full device list is in our technical specifications.

Before launch week

The six things to settle before the first session

Does every student have their own headset?Do students really need headphones?
Does every student have a grade in the roster?What does the roster have to contain before we launch?
Does every student have their own device?Can students share devices?
Is the install planned with your IT team?We are on Chromebooks, or another centrally managed fleet.
Are the practice slots in the timetable?How long is a session, how often, and for how long?
Is the pre-questionnaire done?What will a progress read actually tell me?

Talk to our team

Planning a Poppins Learning block for your school?

Bring your reading team and your IT contact to one 30-minute call. We walk through the routine, the devices, and what a pilot involves.

Talk to our team Poppins Learning for schools

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