PFL is a Stones2Milestones initiative borne out of a decade of original research in early childhood reading by thought leaders from Harvard University, IIM, Stanford University, IIT and the London School of Economics. Reading is a fundamental life skill we need to empower our children with. If our children are not able to read with fluency and comprehension by the time they finish Grade 3, their academic success is at risk, their career prospects are also at risk. This movement is especially designed for children between age 3 to 10 (kindergarten to Grade 4), their parents and school teachers.

Through this initiative, we aim to build awareness and gift the joy of reading together as a community, as a school and as a family. We want to make sure that children see the value in reading through the eyes of their teachers, parents and peers. We want to empower parents, build and sustain a reading culture, equip teachers with reading resources, and help young children build the skill and will to read.

This program is FREE of cost, with an aim to support your school deliver academic excellence. While it does not interfere with your current curriculum, it supplements it by empowering language teachers and librarians to make reading a conscious part of the students’ academic development.

For every child who you sign up for this reading initiative, your school unlocks exclusive benefits and perks.

1. Teachers will get a year of premium access to the fREADom App for free reading resources and lessons.
2. Teachers with the highest number of students registered on fREADom will receive a token of appreciation in the form of a ‘Champions of Change’ certificate.
3. Language teachers and librarians will receive incredible training on the ‘Science of Teaching Reading’ delivered by our team of literacy experts. Our team has trained over 2000 teachers in 1100+ schools across the country.
4. While we empower your teachers to understand more about reading, we also give your children incredible, beautiful reading logs for them to use at home and build that excitement around reading.
5. Every student who maintains a News Streak for 7 days consecutively, wins a ‘Blooming Reader’ e-certificate.
6. Students who answer 3 in-app quizzes accurately, win an in-app badge.
7. Students extending their app usage beyond 30 days trial period will get an exclusive copy of the fREADom Passport to log their reading on a daily and monthly basis.

To join the mission, follow the steps below:

1. Step 1: Fill in the School Pledge Form
2. Step 2: Teachers receive Lifetime Access to the fREADom reading app
3. Step 3: Teachers attend online training on “Science of Teaching Reading” & receive access to reading resource
4. Step 4: Every child gets a free awareness kit after parents are notified by the school (Grade Nursery to Grade 3)
5. Step 5: Periodic check-in and report delivery directly from the assigned PFL Relationship Manager to support stakeholders
6. Step 6: Schools unlock reporting metrics, and additional reading goodies on achieving set milestones

There are two levels to the selection process:

1. Schools will be selected on a first-come, first-serve basis, as this is a limited-period initiative.
2. Schools will have to fulfil specific reading-related commitments which will be intimated to the POC during the onboarding call.

The parents of the children who are a part of PFL can also access fREADom via a unique school code that we will provide for them. Through this code, parents can access hundreds of stories and activities to engage their children at home, to build that bonding and love for reading in children every day, They can also access positive, inspirational and levelised news pieces to read to their children and enhance their general knowledge along with reading skills.

fREADom is an adaptive mobile reading platform that helps parents with children aged 3 - 10, learn to read in English by instilling a daily reading habit. It provides parents and teachers curated and levelised stories, activities, quizzes and daily positive news to enjoy with the child. The app uses an AI-ready recommendation engine to match users to grade-appropriate content.

The aim is to encourage family bonding over time spent reading together from an early age, which studies have found to be the most effective way of nurturing a lifelong reading habit.

We use an AI-ready recommendation engine to match users to the most relevant content. Embedded with an assessment layer, the stories, news and activities on fREADom help us keep tabs on reading levels and help parents track their child’s progress plus find a variety of age-appropriate content at their fingertips.

Content partners associated with fREADom include leading book publishers like HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Champak, Worldreader, Pratham, Book Dash, African Storybook, BookBox, Bookosmia, Kalpavriksh, BaalGatha and many more.

On fREADom children :

• Have a personalised library: Child’s personal feed of stories based on his/her reading level and interest powered by an Artificial Intelligent recommendation engine
• Log their reading: Parents can keep track of their child’s daily reading with smart logs and time tracking
• Do activities: 10 minutes of activity packs & monthly reading challenges sorted by interests and mood
• Read News Flash: Grade-level, appropriate, bite-sized news stories that are inspirational & aspirational along with a flash quiz
• Compete: Children can earn badges, freado points and maintain their streak with their peers at school and the fREADom universe

Made with a vision of solving for academic success, fREADom focuses on parent centred design to nurture tomorrow’s leaders by making the impossible happen -- getting children to fall in love with READING :)

We encourage parents to limit screen time for children and hence, even for children old enough to use the app by themselves, our recommended usage time is ~10 minutes a day. We have been on a mission to promote 'GST - good screen time' which is mindful and not addictive. In fact, we make sure that any unit on the app, be it a story/activity/news is not higher than 5 - 10 mins in length. Moreover, we go a step further in terms of design where for parents whose children are already readers and enjoy offline books, we encourage the same via the 'Reading Tracker' where the parent can keep a digital log of what their child is reading offline.

What seems just like another reading application has a lot going on under the surface. And it is important for us as educators to be aware of that:

1. Recommendation: fREADom is an AI-driven adaptive reading app that understands the current reading level of the child and then recommends literature/activities/news based on what the child can understand. NO TWO CHILDREN in the same class see the same set of stories recommended to them. The fREADom team, rewrites out news, daily at 4 different reading levels and serves it to children only at the level they can understand.
2. Diversity: Technology enables us to serve 1000+ stories / activities from around the globe which parents and educators otherwise might not have access to. Consider this, one of the most popular stories on the app is from a publisher in Africa named 'Book Dash' whose tales are not even published outside their home country. Without the current medium, our children would have never had access to this content. Or the fact that Same Language Subtitling has been proven to be one of the best ways for struggling readers to pick up the language, and we make this possible via the audio-visual stories on the app.
3. Skill Level: Not only does it help the parent but also the school understand what exactly is the current reading level of the child and how is he / she is improving over time with regards to their individual skill hence aiding the teacher to carve out a personalised reading path for each child with the help of technology.

The language is simple enough on the app. Parents just need to make sure that their child explores the app with them. There are many audio and video stories and activities that can help parents and children go on a learning journey together. We also recommend that the parent take the assistance of a family member to make this journey even more effective. Over time, the bigger impact can be that parents pick up English which is very useful as a facilitator in a child’s learning at school.