🇹🇷 Türkçe · 🇬🇧 English
Aktapokus Kids English: a two-minute introduction
What? A free English vocabulary, listening and speaking app for children in grades 2–6. It opens in the browser on phones, tablets and smart boards; nothing to install.
Independence note: Aktapokus Kids English is an independent volunteer project. It is not official material of the Turkish Ministry of National Education (MEB) and has not been approved by it; the national English curriculum is used as a source for content and sequence.
Who makes it? Not a company or an institution: I am developing the app as a volunteer, in my free time. Nothing is sold.
Why? My aim is equal opportunity: access to a good learning tool should not depend on a family's budget. English is the first step; in the same spirit, I would like to build free tools for primary science, maths and coding too, and grow them into a learning ecosystem.
What is it based on?
- The Turkish Ministry of Education English curriculum (Maarif Model) and the Cambridge YLE word lists. British English is used.
- Every word is taught with a picture + audio + example sentence.
- Words come back again and again in different but similar sentences.
- At primary level, grammar rules are not memorised; structures are learned from examples.
- No account, no ads, no trackers.
What does the child do?
Each episode has 4–6 words. The steps come in order:
👀 Discover → ❓ Listen & choose → 🎤 Speak → 🧩 Build the sentence → 🔤 Complete the letters
- Adventure: A space journey. Each station is a grade (Moon = grade 2, Mars = grade 3 … Galaxy = grade 6).
- Library: Free practice. It includes:
- words by topic;
- days, months, seasons;
- question words, opposites;
- verb twins (go–went), A2 topics;
- stories read aloud;
- Sing & Move (chants and "Aktapokus Says").
- Words the child gets wrong come back automatically on later days.
What can a teacher do?
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| 🏫 Create a class | Create a class in the teacher panel and give the code to the students. |
| 📊 Follow progress | Who practised how much, which topics they finished, and which words they found hardest. There is also a view by MEB curriculum units. |
| 🎯 Weekly task | Choose topics, add a note and a due date. The task appears on the student's home screen. |
| 🧑🏫 Classroom mode | Big pictures on the smart board and a two-team quiz game. Opens only from the teacher panel. |
| 🖨️ Printables | Word cards, bingo, worksheets (with an answer key). |
| 📘 Daily lesson plan | A full school year for grades 2–6 following the national curriculum’s yearly structure: 72 lessons in grades 2–4, 108 in grades 5–6. On the smart board Aktapokus says all the English and the teacher moves on with one key when the class is ready; the teacher sees Turkish instructions on a separate screen. A printed lesson card is included. A teacher who is not an English teacher can run the lesson. |
| ⚑ Content review | If a card has a wrong picture or sentence, turn on Content review in the Parent Area and report it from the card. |
The teacher panel is currently in Turkish; the app itself can be switched to English.
What does a parent see?
In the Parent Area inside the app:
- the child's weekly practice and the words they found hard;
- a weekly summary: words learned this week and 3 sentences to say together at home;
- session length ("Continue, or tomorrow?");
- backup.
Offline use and updates
- It works offline. Open the app once on a good connection, wait a few minutes and add it to the home screen ("Add to Home screen" / "Install app"). When the home screen says "✅ Ready to use offline", it also opens without internet.
- Only speech recognition and class sync need internet. Work done offline is not lost; it is sent when the connection returns.
- Voice: Aktapokus speaks with the phone's own English voice. For offline speech the phone needs an English voice pack; if it is missing, the app shows how to install it on first launch.
- Updates arrive by themselves. Just open the app while online; new content and fixes download automatically, no reinstalling needed. Only changed files are downloaded, so updates use very little mobile data.
Android app (APK)
- An Android app called Aktapokus Kids English is ready and being tested; a Google Play release is planned.
- It is the same as the web version: installed on the phone, opened from its icon, full screen without an address bar.
- Because the content comes from the site, it updates itself; no reinstalling for every fix. Offline use works as in the web version.
- Coming with the APK: a daily reminder notification at a time the parent chooses, and a screen to install the English voice pack with one tap.
- To use it today without waiting for the APK: open the app on the phone and choose "Add to Home screen" in the browser menu.
Privacy (in short)
- Progress stays on the child's own device.
- A child joins a class only with a parent’s consent; only the name (a nickname is fine) and progress go to the teacher. Details: data notice (Turkish).
- No email, phone number, location or voice recording is collected.
For educational organisations and volunteers
- Free, nothing to install: Opens in the browser on shared tablets, in a library or a learning centre. Several children can use the same device with separate profiles.
- For places with weak internet: Open the tablets once on Wi-Fi and leave them for a few minutes; after that they can be used offline in class.
- Volunteer-friendly: Classroom mode and the printables (cards, bingo, worksheets) are designed so that a volunteer who is not an English teacher can also run a ready-made activity. The correct pronunciation is given with audio on every screen.
- Continuing at home: The child carries on at home from where they left off; the family gets a weekly summary and sentences to say at home.
- Status: The app is ready for pilot use. The full release will follow field work in schools and learning centres. I have checked the content one by one against the source lists; to test it in real classrooms and real life, I need the support of English teachers, NGOs and education volunteers. A small pilot, or even a quick look and a comment, helps a lot.
Try it in 5 minutes
- Open the app, create a profile and play the first episode of the Adventure.
- In the teacher panel, create an account and a test class, and join it with the code from your own phone.
- In the panel, press Sınıf modunu aç (Open classroom mode) and try the "Questions (teams)" activity.
If you are interested, the full guide explains everything step by step: https://aktapokus.github.io/kids-english/guide.html
Reporting a bug or making a suggestion
A wrong picture or sentence, a missing topic, an idea that would work in class: whatever you notice, write to me; I read every message.
- From inside the app: tap the Aktapokus mascot; the 💬 Report a bug / Suggest link at the bottom of the menu opens an email with the subject filled in.
- Email: bmenderes@gmail.com