Information & FAQ

No. All teacher dashboards will include a free working app for any app purchases. This also applies to any PDFs purchased. For example, if you purchased five web-app licenses and assigned them to five students, you will have a working app on your dashboard. You will have access to the app from your dashboard if there is at least one student assigned app that has not expired. All PDFs do not expire and will always be available to you.

You will have one year, from the date of purchase, to assign your licenses to your students. Once assigned, your students' licenses will expire one year from the date of assignment. For example, if you purchased 25 licenses and immediately assigned 5 licenses to 5 students, then those licenses will expire one year from the date you purchased the licenses. If 364 days from your purchase, you assign the remaining 20 to 20 other students, then their expiration date will be one year from that date you assigned them (which will be one year plus the 364 days from the purchase date).

Yes. On your dashboard you can view your class. From the list you can select to give a student coins. Your account will come with 25 free coins. After that, they can be purchased as an online product.

Please view our "Questions About Our Online Apps" on our Web-App Products page.

If a student is no longer using their web-app, you can assign it to another student. If the web-app is the kind that expires, the new student will be able to use the app for the duration of the license.

Absolutely! Whether you're supplementing after school or homeschooling, our teaching tools can help you. Instead of a classroom, you'll create just one student account for your child. You'll be able to do everything that a teacher can do such as monitor progress and give incentive coins to your child.

You do not need a separate account for your personal needs. If your role is only as a teacher (not an admin), if you purchase licenses with your account, they will go to your personal account. Your dashboard will keep your roles separate. Also, if you are a teacher who is on a teacher list for multiple schools or institutions, they will all be listed separately on your dashboard (as long as you use the same email for all institutions).

Your school will have one student list which includes all students that you or other teachers from your school entered. This is done so that if a student has more than one teacher, they only have one account. Note that this secure list is for your school only, other schools will not have access to your school's student list. You will build your classroom from this list. Your classroom is not shared with other teachers.

Yes, you can submit a Purchase Order for our online products as well as our physcial books, providing you meet the specifications outlined below.

* Purchase Orders for physical books should be submitted separately from Purchase Orders for our online products. Read below for the specifications.

We hold the right to suspend any accounts that are in arrears.

All book sales are final.

When creating your PO, please refer to the product page for the prices and product names. On your PO, be sure to include your School ID, the item names, prices, and quantities.

Once your order has processed, you will receive an email to notify you. You can then 1) view/pay your invoice via your Adimin Dashboard, and 2) assign teachers to your app licenses.

Note: to submit a PO you will need to register as a school administrator. If you already registered and need to add school administrator as your role, please send an email with your username (the email you used to register) and the request.

No. All apps or PDFs purchased will also be available, at no charge, to the teacher on the teacher's dashboard. For web-apps that expire after a year, the teacher will be able to access the free app on the dashboard as long as there is at least one student assigned app that has not expired.

If, for some reason, a student no longer needs a web app (license), the license may be transferred to another student. Note that if the app expires, the new student will have access to the app for the remainder of the life of the license.

Yes. Coins can be purchased in groups of 50, and you can give coins to teachers from your account. Although students will earn coins as they play the web-apps, teachers can give extra coins as an incentive. Teacher and admin accounts initially receive 25 free coins to give students.

If your role is an Admin and a Teacher, when you create an account, you should select those roles. If you already created an account and need to make an adjustment, please send us an email with the details. If you have both roles, then you will have two dashboards, one for an administrator and one for a teacher. Note that, as an admin, you will have to add yourself to your teacher list in order for you to assign web-apps or PDFs to yourself.

If your school is in New York State, you should email us your NYS tax exempt status form. We will mark your account as sales tax exempt and any purchases made via our site will not include sales tax.

No, you only need to enter the teachers to whom you will be assigning licenses. The teachers will add the students. Note that the students added will be in one list for your school. This way one student can have several teachers, which is a common situation.

Our apps will run on any device that uses a browser. This includes tablets, mobile phones, PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks.

Yes, in order to run the apps, you will need to be connected to the internet.

Even though the web apps will scale to the size of a mobile phone, due to the size limitations, we do not recommend that they be used. This, of course, is ultimately up to your preference. Our Arcade games are, however, made to be enjoyed on mobile phones since we want to encourage students to use the coins they've earned on their devices.

Browsers save files in cache so loading will take less time when you open the app in the future. Unfortunately, this can cause problems if the browser is updated, a cached file becomes corrupt, or when a change is made to the web app. Some files may update, while others don't, which can cause the app to not load or, if it does load, it may not operate properly. Your browser needs to be told to do a complete reload (not the same as a refresh). There are a few ways to make your browser reload all web pages.

If you're still having trouble, please make sure you have the latest browser version installed. Also, you will need to allow cookies to be stored and allow local storage to be used. To verify that your device will run our apps, run the HTML5 validator to make sure your settings are correct.

Mobile phones require that the ringer is used as a mute button. To get sound, please make sure your ringer is on and that your device is not muted. If you believe your ringer is on and you're still not getting sound, use headphones. If you're getting sound with headphones, then your device is muted.

If you have multiple apps open, there may not be enough memory to handle the functions of the app. Please close all open apps and then reopen the web app. If it's still not right, turn your device completely off and then turn it back on (you should see a black screen with the Apple logo). If that doesn't work, then you should clear the browser data.

To clear your browser data, first close this site on your browser. Then follow the directions for your browser to clear the cache and website data. If you're using Safari, you can do this by opening Settings, scroll down to find Safari, then you can either click on "Clear History and Website Data", or you can clear the data for our site only by scrolling down to "Advanced" > Website Data > find blastofftolearning.com > swipe left to get the "Delete" button. Finally, reopen this site and then open the webapp.

Once you purchase a program (or any web-app or PDF from this site), it will be available on your dashboard. The apps are web-based, which means that they run from your browser and downloading to your computer is not necessary. Note that you will need to be connected to the internet to run the apps.

If your child has an average or above average IQ, you should first try Blast Off to Reading. If you child is less mature, and/or has learning difficulties (other than dyslexia), you may want to start with the I Can Fly Reading Program. Both programs start with phonemic awareness, however, Blast Off to Reading is faster paced, covers more material (more rules, sounds and some ELA), and is more difficult.

Teaching a group of students is not very different than one-on-one. Using a Smart Board, review prior lessons using the flash cards, having the class chant the sounds. Then use the lesson slides for the lesson, encouraging class participation. Finally, demonstrate word building with the new sounds using the letter tiles (also review sounds from previous lessons).

When the students are doing their lesson-based activities, that's your time to give attention to those in need. You can view the students' progress metrics, for each student, to see which lessons need more practice and instruct those students to play the activities for those lessons. During this time, you could work with students one-on-one, going over the flash cards and using the letter tiles.

The programs are designed to build up on previous sounds and rules so that a student is not expected to know a sound or rule if it wasn't yet taught. Thus, skipping around is not recommended. If, however, you're only using our programs as a supplement to another program, then skipping around is fine.

The programs address both reading and spelling, since the two do go hand-in-hand. Note that the I Can Fly Reading Program does not emphasis spelling as much as Blast Off to Reading, however, the activities in the I Can Fly Program do contain word building with sounds and a spelling activity. The progress metrics will show the spelling score for the spelling activity.

Once the long vowel rules are taught, then students should begin reading 15 to 20 minutes a day with a proficient reader using our side-by-side method. Read more about our side-by-side method.

The OG approach can benefit any student learning to read. Students who are not dyslexic who use the OG approach will be better decoders and spellers. This is because they will be taught all sounds and rules and will be able to decode words that they've never heard before. The OG approach isn't just phonics, it's a combination of phonics mixed with rules and exceptions, and it's taught in a systematic, cumulative manner with a lot of review. Read more about the Orton-Gillingham approach.