A Classroom Tool Built for a Principal
A-B-C Development started with a request from my sister, a school principal, who wanted a way to use technology in a kindergarten classroom. Learning the alphabet is one of the first big milestones in kindergarten, and teachers need to know which letters each child has mastered and which still need work.
The mission was: build a tool that lets a teacher check a child's letter knowledge one letter at a time, and then see each student's progress in one place.
I also wanted it to feel as playful as the classroom it was built for. The app is calm yet colorful, and the letters look like the alphabet blocks children already know.
How It Works
Every student has their own profile with a dashboard. Each test is called a challenge in the app. To run one, the teacher opens a page of alphabet blocks and goes through them with the child, one block at a time.
If the child names the letter correctly, the teacher flips the block one way. If the child gets it wrong, they flip it the other way. Flipping is the whole interaction: there are no forms to fill in and nothing to type, so the teacher can keep their attention on the child. When the challenge ends, the results are saved to that student's profile.
The backend is built in Ruby on Rails and the frontend in React.
Challenges Along the Way
The hardest part was the dashboard. The numbers teachers need are simple, but a page of plain tables would be tedious to read, and I wanted something that matched the playful feel of the rest of the app. I had to find a way to show the data that was visually interesting and still genuinely useful to a busy teacher.
Features
Alphabet Blocks
Each letter appears as a block that looks like a children's letter block. Flipping it one way records a correct answer, and flipping it the other way records a miss. The interaction is quick and physical, so teachers can move through the alphabet at the child's pace.
Student Dashboard
Each student's profile has a dashboard that answers two questions:
- Is this child improving? A graph shows the student's percentage score for each challenge over time.
- What should we practice next? A breakdown shows how the student scores on each individual letter.
Student Profiles
Every child has their own profile, so a teacher can come back to any student and see their history without comparing notes from different tests.
