Grafari is a digital tutorial that takes the child on a spelling journey, from phonological awareness through orthographic rules, to individual determinations (Einzelfestlegungen). Grafari is designed as a unique three-part course that grows with the child's development:
● Grafari for Kindergarten with a focus on phonological awareness Grafari for 1st/2nd grade as an introduction to writing with phoneme-grapheme mapping and writing regular words● Grafari for 3rd to 6th grade with a focus on word structure and orthography
Each part is self-contained. Currently, Grafari for 1st/2nd grade is released, and the application for the World Didac Award 2023 is for these two grades. Grafari for 1st/2nd grade includes modules 3 to 5 of the entire Grafari.
Thanks to adaptive algorithms based on machine intelligence and AI principles, Grafari accompanies the child adaptively and completely individualized in his or her acquisition of written language from the first to the sixth grade. As a consequence of Mastery Learning , the child achieves spelling and writing competencies step by step, which inspires his or her self-efficacy, his media competence and ability to express themselves. In addition, the teacher is relieved by the program in that he or she does not have to assign each exercise nor that he or she needs to evaluate every step that has been achieved, as this is done by the adaptive algorithms. Thanks to the small-step methodical division of the tasks, support diagnostics are facilitated.
The program is compatible with all first reading teaching materials in Switzerland and also repeatedly transfers digital writing to analog, promoting the child holistically, by providing a hybrid learning process. The learning content corresponds to the Swiss Curriculum LP21.
The child undertakes journeys to unknown worlds in the reward system , unlocking stories by the author of children's and young adults' books Carlo Meier. The time in the reward system is limited and the child cannot spend endless screen time in this part of the module. Learners always have an overview of their learning status in the form of a learning passport.
The teacher is relieved in this respect by receiving individualized monitoring of the learners throughout the program. The learning content that teachers must teach in a school year is cushioned by the learning program. Additional learning content can be introduced and/or covered while the program continues to work with the child wherever he or she is in his or her individual literacy acquisition.
More specifically for Grafari 1st/2nd grade, the teacher can keep up to date with the developmental diagnostics thanks to an integrated phoneme-grapheme screening. The acquisition of written language is systematically built up in various modules with a strong hierarchical structure:
● Module 3 is dedicated to grapheme-phoneme correspondence.● Module 4 trains phonetic spelling i.e. writing of regular words.● Module 5 deals with the first spelling rule, the capitalization of nouns and sentence beginnings.
Accompanying individual writing strategies (and in Grafari for 3rd through 6th grade also spelling rules), referred to as flashcards (Lernwörter, Lernkarten), are practiced digitally and analogously. This ensures a learning unit that is adapted to the development of the individual child and can be offered in a fully inclusive manner.
The design of the program is child-friendly and simple, so that the focus is on the task at hand. It follows the "function before form" principle, which the authors and designers already successful implemented in a previous application by Dybuster, Orthograph, which won the "Design Prize Switzerland" in 2021. The operation of the program is intuitive and uses as few paths as possible to get to the task, the reward system, or the learning passport.
A sophisticated simplified login system is based on a sequence of images and offers simplicity and highest possible data security at the same time. It also allows young learners who do not yet know any letters to start the training independently. This is particularly appreciated by teachers, who otherwise spend so much time logging in that a lesson is at least halfway over before the application can be started.
Grafari is a digital course that grows with the learner, relieves teachers in individualization and fights the wait-to-fail diagnosis commonly applied to dyslexia and illiteracy detection. With its multisensory learning approach, Grafari presents information using more than one sense, opening up new brain learning channels. This makes it easier for children to learn in ways that come naturally to them and helps them develop new skills and better retain information. It is a digital enrichment that always connects to analog learning and offers additional value compared to worksheet or single teacher handling an entire class.