Turn the Page
A reading tutor I built for my own children, who were learning a language nobody at home speaks. It writes stories they want to keep reading, pitched at their age and level, and checks they understood each page before they turn it.
Interest first
The reader's age decides what a story is about; their level decides how hard the language is. A fifteen-year-old who reads like a beginner still gets a story worth reading, in sentences they can manage. And they choose it, from three written for them, so the reading is something they picked rather than a chore handed to them.
Any word they don't know is a tap away, explained as it's used in that sentence, and the whole sentence if they're still stuck. A word asked about a second time gets explained a different way, with something to hang it on.
Every page understood before the next
After each page come three questions in English about what happened, and one for every word they tapped. The page stays open beside them, because rereading is the skill. Answers are marked for meaning, never spelling, and a wrong one points to where the answer was on the page.
Words that still gave trouble come back in sentences they have never seen before the next page opens, new ones on every attempt, so the check can't be passed from memory.
Words that come back
Every tap and every answer goes into a word bank. Words they get right come back less and less often, after a day, three, a week, three weeks, two months; words they miss come straight back, and the ones they struggle with are worked quietly into their next stories.
Made for children
Nothing on screen says how it works: no chat box, no AI, nothing to ask it to do the homework. A failure is a sentence a child can act on and a button to try again. The demo keeps the reader's progress in their own browser, and its server holds the key behind a bot check, daily limits and a spending cap.