Read and Build

A story to listen to — made of sentences they can build.

A tablet screen with a story passage across the top, the question "What is he doing?", a picture of a boy washing an apple at a sink, and columns of picture tiles for building the sentence.

What Read and Build is

Read and Build is ALPINE AI's third product. It takes the Sentence Builder's idea one step further: instead of a photo prompting a sentence, a short illustrated story does. The learner listens to a page read aloud — the sentence being spoken lights up as it is read — and on build pages, the sentence they just heard becomes theirs to build, from the exact same word tiles and picture symbols they know from the Sentence Builder.

The stories are written around the curriculum, not the other way round: every build sentence in a story is one of the sentences the learner is currently working on. Read and Build runs on the same tablet, with the same calm look and the same voice. It is new — in family testing now, ahead of joining the Sentence Builder in daily use — and, like everything under the ALPINE AI name, it is not a commercial product.

How a story works

A story is a sequence of pages of exactly two kinds. Story pages are for listening: a picture, the text, one Play button, and nothing to get right. Build pages read their passage aloud, then ask one question about it — and the tiles wait below.

  • Listen to a page
  • Follow the lit sentence
  • A build page asks its question
  • Build the story's sentence
  • A gentle "look again" if it doesn't match
  • A quiet Well Done
A story page: a picture of two children running out of a farmhouse on the left, the story text beside it, and a single Play button.
A story page — picture, text, one Play button. The app reads it aloud, lighting up each sentence as it is spoken.
A build page: the passage across the top, the question "What is he doing?", the page's picture, and columns of picture tiles.
A build page — the passage stays on screen, one question, and the same tile columns as the Sentence Builder.
The same build page after a sentence that doesn't match the story: a "Look again" chip, the matching sentence highlighted in the passage, and green outlines on the tiles that belong.
When a finished sentence doesn't match the page: "Look again", the matching sentence highlighted in the story text, and outlines on the tiles that belong. Nothing buzzes; nothing says wrong.
The build page after the correct sentence: the completed sentence in a green box, a quiet "Well Done" with a single star, and Hear it and Next buttons.
The win: the sentence read back, one star, a quiet Well Done — the same calm praise as the Sentence Builder.
The adult settings sheet: a practice mode row, support dials for sentence hint, training wheels and story context, and a per-build answer-mode list.
The invisible adult side — practice mode, sentence hint, training wheels (a green outline marks the tiles that are already right after a miss), story context, and a per-build answer mode. Dial changes apply from the next start, never mid-story.

The same foundations

Read and Build inherits every commitment the Sentence Builder made — and adds a few of its own.

Stories walk the curriculum

Every build sentence in a story is a sentence from the learner's current map — the story gives the same practice a home, a reason, and a rhythm.

Rest beats by design

Story pages ask nothing. They are deliberate rest beats — listening, looking, and following the words at the learner's own pace.

Supports are dials, not fixtures

The sentence hint, the tile outlines, and how much of the story stays on screen during a build are adult-set dials — support fades as the learner grows.

Their place is remembered

A finished story carries a check mark, and if the app closes partway through, the story reopens at their place in it. Progress never resets.

The same measurement promise

Practice mode keeps adult taps out of the learner's record, and the app reports what happened — it never judges. The same rules as the Sentence Builder, from day one.

Explore

Three ways to see Read and Build in context.

Watch the walkthrough

Episode 6 of the video series: a full story page, a build, the gentle look-again support, and the adult side — four minutes, narrated, recorded on the real app.

Watch Episode 6 →

The shared curriculum

The 15-map grammar ladder both products draw from. Read and Build's first story walks all eight sentences of Map 1 — the same tiles, inside a story.

See the ladder →

Read and Build with Reward

The same stories and builds, with the scene's own picture first appearing as a jigsaw. Solving the puzzle opens the story page, and the page reads itself aloud.

Explore Read and Build with Reward →