Target User: Educators (K-8 Teachers)

Objective: Research shows that repeated reading of words, sentences, and passages significantly improves fluency. To address this need, I worked with Project Read to develop an Interactive Decodable Games Generator for educators teaching Kindergarten through 8th grade. This tool enables teachers to create engaging, curriculum-aligned practice opportunities for their students by generating customizable reading games. These games integrate "focus words" from specific lessons into predefined templates, ensuring targeted skill development. The generated games can then be exported as print-ready PDFs, providing flexible options for classroom activities.

Educators often lack the time and resources to create customized reading materials tailored to their specific lesson plans and student needs. While the client already had tools for generating decodable stories, they needed an engaging, scalable solution to incorporate focus words into varied and interactive games that would hold students' interest while reinforcing fluency skills.

Together with Project Read, we built an intuitive platform that allows teachers to:

Select a Curriculum and Lesson: Teachers input their curriculum and lesson details to retrieve associated "focus words."

Generate Interactive Games: These focus words are seamlessly integrated into a variety of game templates, such as word searches, bingo cards, and matching games.

Export as PDFs: Once a game is generated, teachers can easily download print-ready PDFs for classroom use.

The platform streamlined the process of creating differentiated fluency practice materials, saving teachers time while providing students with meaningful and enjoyable learning experiences.

Front-End Development: I created an engaging, user-friendly interface with Nextjs, Typescript, and Emotion CSS — ensuring teachers could navigate the tool effortlessly.

Back-End Development: Created Nextjs api endpoint / logic to pull focus words from a curriculum database and dynamically populate game templates.

PDF Generation: I implemented a PDF export feature using React PDF to generate high-quality printable materials.

Front-End: React, Nextjs, Typescript, Zod, and Emotion CSS for responsive and accessible UI.

Back-End: Nextjs API endpoint.

Database: PostgreSQL to store curriculum, lesson data, and focus words.

PDF Generation: React PDF.

Saved teachers hours of manual work by automating the creation of reading materials.

Increased student engagement through varied and interactive games.

Aligned materials to individual lesson plans, ensuring students practiced the exact skills they needed.

This project showcased my ability to combine technical expertise with educational insights to create a practical, user-friendly solution for teachers. I learned the importance of integrating existing tools into a seamless workflow and ensuring outputs (PDFs) met high usability standards.