2026-11-05: Soft c and g are now a stage of their own, group 8, on the Word List Builder, Blending Practice, Syllable Practice, Sentence Creator, Sound Checker and Lesson Plan Builder, with new words behind them: c before e, i or y (city, face), and g as in gem and page. A silent e that isn’t a magic e now works too, with the ce or ge as one sound (dance, fence, hinge); peace, voice and large wait for their vowel spellings. Vowel teams, diphthongs and r-controlled vowels move up to groups 9, 10 and 11. Saved lessons and settings keep their sounds.

2026-11-05: Lesson Plan Builder up to version 0.17.0: the auditory drill now asks each sound once (ee, ea and e_e share one card, since a student writes every spelling they know the first time), and the concept examples are shared out so that as many of today’s sounds as possible get one. A word can no longer turn up twice in one list.

2026-11-04: Lesson Plan Builder up to version 0.15.0: review and new can now use the same sounds, for a student who is not ready to move on yet (only sounds that are truly new stay out of review); a new section for previous points of need, from any stage, which go into the word lists, the cards, and the spreadsheet; the Weld switch is out of Advanced and easier to find, and it turns on at stage 5 and up (you can still turn it off); and the three text boxes are now full width. Across the basic-reading pages, words like hang and bank no longer break into an + g or an + k.

2026-10-31: New: the Unit Circle Explorer. Drag a point around the circle to see the special angles and their exact values, reference angles, how the sine and cosine waves are drawn, and what a radian is, with practice questions. In English or Spanish.

2026-10-28: Lesson Plan Builder up to version 0.13.1: added a box for dictation sentences; tweaked some spreadsheet formatting; and set new “% nonsense” word defaults (because older students have memorized so many words).

2026-10-25: New section: Read-Along Stories. A story page with a recording, where each word lights up as it is read; click any word to hear it from there, slow the reading down, make the text bigger. First story: Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, read by Peter Lamb (public domain).

2026-10-23: Lesson Plan Builder 0.11.0: a “% nonsense” box on the blending drill and the reading and spelling lists (made-up words from the same sounds, in italics on the page and the handout); a switch for the silent-l -alk / -olk words (walk, talk, chalk, folk, yolk), kept apart from the -lk blend; and the Syllabication section holds back syllable types that aren’t taught yet (no -le or magic-e words at stage 5). Then 0.12.0: the student handout carries the whole lesson (reading sentences and a reading paragraph you type on the plan, or ruled space if you don’t; dictation last), its words at 20 pt, and the spreadsheet’s word lists are larger and laid out in the handout’s columns and order.

2026-10-21: The browser tools from my NeoCities site moved here as Classroom & Reading Tools: phonics and reading practice, lesson planning, word games, readability checking, classroom display, and more.

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