Practice Time: Learning Through Repetition

Children rarely learn a tricky word the first time they meet it — they learn it by coming back to it, a little at a time, in a setting that feels safe. That's what Practice Time is for. RITA Quest quietly notices the words your child finds hard, then brings them back in short, gentle, no-pressure rounds until they stick.

How Rita notices tricky words

There are two signals, and neither is ever shown to your child as a mistake:

• Tap to hear. While reading a passage or story, your child can tap a word they're unsure of to hear it spoken. The reading timer pauses while the word plays, that round isn't scored as a miss, and the result celebrates “New word learned!” Rita remembers the word for later.
• Wrong answers in the games. When your child gets a word wrong in Spelling, Vocabulary or Sound Match, that word is noted too.

Each time a word is noticed, Rita adds it to a private list for that child. The more often a word comes up, the more it is worth practising. Only you see this list — it lives on the Progress page, not in the games.

New, Practicing, Mastered

Every noticed word moves through three stages. The key idea is repetition: a word moves up by being answered correctly twice in a row in Practice Time.

What a practice round looks like

• A sentence with a gap. Your child sees a sentence that uses the word, with the word left blank, and picks the right one from three choices. They can tap to hear the word too.
• No timer, no streak to protect. It's deliberately calm — take as long as you like.
• Short and focused. A session brings back up to 8 of the words your child most needs — the ones that aren't mastered yet.
• Words that aren't ready wait. A word only appears in a round once it has a sentence and recording to go with it, so you may see it join practice a little later.

What parents can see and control

On the Progress page, the Words Rita is helping with card shows how many words are New, Practicing and Mastered, the words being practised right now, and a small chart of words mastered over the last 6 weeks. A Start a practice session button launches a round for that child straight away.

In your account, the Word Practice tab lets you tune practice for each child:

• When a word counts as worth practising — every time it's noticed (the default, most words), after 2 times, or after 3 times, so you can focus on words that keep coming up.
• Which curricula to draw from — all of them, or just the ones you pick.

These settings only change which words appear in Practice Time. Rita keeps noticing words either way.

Tips for getting the most from it

• Little and often beats long and rare — one short round a few times a week works well.
• Celebrate the stars. Watching words turn to Mastered is motivating; point them out together.
• Keep it light. A word in “Practicing” is just a word still on its way — not a problem.

We don't send practice reminders yet. If you'd find them useful, please tell us below.

For children

Practice Time is a cosy round of word puzzles. Fill in the missing word, tap to hear it if you like, and don't worry about mistakes — you can try again next time. Get a word right twice and watch it grow from a little seed to a shiny star!

Tell us how it's going

Practice Time is new, so your experience matters a lot. A few things we're curious about:

• Do the words chosen feel like the right ones for your child?
• Is a round of up to 8 words the right length?
• Is the Progress card clear, and is there anything else you'd like to see?
• Would practice reminders help?

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