About RethinkLit
A teacher and an engineer, building something better for their kids, and yours
RethinkLit started at the kitchen table. One of us is a primary school teacher who sees every day how children can struggle with writing, and what helps when the right support is in place. The other is an IT engineer who believed technology could make that support easier to access and easier for children to stick with.
We built the first version of RethinkLit for our own children. We wanted something that would help them practise their letters, learn to spell, and build confidence with writing, without the flashy distractions of many educational apps. We wanted it to feel calm, structured, and grounded in how children actually learn.
It worked. Our kids loved it. Before long, we realised other children could benefit from the same approach, along with the parents and teachers supporting them. So we kept building. RethinkLit has grown into a set of tools and activities across six modules, but the heart of it is still the same: two parents who wanted something better for their kids and decided to make it.
Our Approach: Grounded in the Science of Reading
At RethinkLit, we believe every child deserves the chance to become a confident reader and writer. That happens when learning is based on how the brain actually learns to read. Our platform is built on the Science of Reading: decades of research from psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience that explain how children develop strong literacy skills.
What the Science of Reading Tells Us
Learning to read and write isn't something we pick up naturally. It must be taught explicitly and systematically. The Science of Reading shows that children learn best when they understand the clear connections between:
Phonemes
The smallest sounds in words, such as /s/, /a/, or /t/.
Graphemes
The letters or groups of letters that represent those sounds.
Blending & Segmenting
Joining sounds together to make words and breaking them apart to spell them.
Orthographic Mapping
How our brains store words for instant recognition through repeated sound–letter practice.
When children link sounds to symbols through repeated, meaningful practice, reading and spelling become automatic, freeing their minds to focus on comprehension and creativity.
Six Modules That Bring the Research to Life
We translate the Science of Reading into hands-on, engaging learning modules:
Letter Lab
Children watch an animated letter demonstration, trace over it with guidance, then write it independently. Starting with SATPIN and progressing through all letter families, it builds the motor memory and confidence that underpin everything else.
Word Lab
Spelling comes alive through three lenses: sounds (dragging graphemes into phoneme boxes), patterns (discovering spelling rules and word endings), and meaning (building words from prefixes, bases, and suffixes). Activities range from Sounds to Letters and Spelling Patterns to the unlockable Word Detective, where children spot and fix errors on their own.
Grammar Lab
Children sort words into parts of speech, spot grammar patterns in sentences, fix run-ons, and learn sentence types, building the underlying knowledge that makes writing stronger and more precise.
Sentence Builder
Starting with a simple base sentence, children drag and drop word cards to expand it. They add adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, watching their sentences grow richer and more expressive with each addition.
Writing Studio
Older students (Years 5–6) move from reading a teacher-modelled paragraph to writing their own, step by step, through the Gradual Release of Responsibility: Record, Model, Scaffold, Self.
Listen & Write
Children hear a word or sentence and write it by hand. Every letter is checked individually, and if they struggle with the same sound more than once, we open the matching Word Lab lesson before returning to dictation.
Each module follows an "I Do, We Do, You Do" scaffold, gradually transferring responsibility from teacher or model to student independence. This is a key principle of effective instruction.
Designed to Reduce Cognitive Load
Learning to write is one of the most cognitively demanding tasks for young children. They are learning how letters look and sound, how to form and combine them, how to spell and punctuate, and how to hold their sentence idea in mind while writing it. With so many elements happening at once, it is easy for working memory to become overloaded.
RethinkLit is designed to reduce this load. The platform breaks learning into clear, manageable steps and keeps activities focused on one skill at a time. This structure helps children build writing knowledge and confidence gradually, without becoming overwhelmed, supporting progress, accuracy, and enjoyment in early writing.
Why It Matters
When instruction aligns with how the brain learns, students don't just memorise words. They understand how language works. RethinkLit helps learners move from sounding out simple words to writing complete sentences with confidence and meaning.
Our mission is simple: to make evidence-based literacy instruction engaging, accessible, and effective for every child.