ReadBridge

Paste, upload, or pick a saved text to get started.

📚 Science of Reading Aligned

Paste your text or upload a PDF or photo of it, then press Read to Me. Tap any word you get stuck on to hear what it means, break it into syllables, or look at its parts.

📖Read Something New

or upload a PDF / photo

📄Choose a PDF or photo

📚Your Texts

A quick tour of ReadBridge

A brief overview and walk-through of the main features, in the order you would teach them — background knowledge and text structure, the passage and Read to Me, tapping a word for syllables, morphology, a definition or context clues, then Simplify, alternating reading, the comprehension check, the word-study decks, and a running record.

2 min 23 sec · no sound needed to follow along, but it is narrated

The Components of the Science of Reading

🧠

Background Knowledge

Part of the language-comprehension strand of Scarborough's Rope. Before every passage, ReadBridge auto-analyzes the text's structure and asks what a student already knows, then builds a short primer to activate relevant background knowledge.

🔤

Word Analysis

Orton-Gillingham-based Syllabication, Morphology, and Context Clues word-tap tools break words into syllable types, morphemes, and meaning — explicit, systematic phonics at the point of need.

⏱️

Fluent Reading

Reading accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with expression. Read to Me (Google Neural TTS with word-level highlighting), Alternating Reading, and Running Records all build and measure fluency.

💬

Vocabulary

Word meanings in context. The Definition and Context Clues word-tap tools teach vocabulary using the student's own text, not isolated word lists.

🧩

Comprehension

Making meaning from text. The 5-question Comprehension Check is aligned to CCSS ELA Reading Standards — literal, inferential, structural, and vocabulary-in-context understanding — after every passage.

Running Record

Passage

Passage text

Student label (optional — your own reference, e.g. initials; never sent anywhere)

1:00

Tap a word to mark a misread, self-correction, skip, help, or repeat — and tap the last word read to mark where the student stopped.

Error SC self-correction Omit TA teacher-assist R repeat

Results

Words the student read, up to the stopping point

—

Words correct / min

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Accuracy

Miscue breakdown

🎭 Alternating Read

What is alternating reading?

The app and student take turns reading aloud. While the app reads, the student follows along with word-by-word highlighting. When it's the student's turn, the whole sentence highlights and they read aloud — tapping any word brings up a quick definition.

Choose a reading pattern

New Text

Title

Grade level

Student's language

📄Choose a PDF or photo

Topic

Type

Passage Length

🎯 Taught Concepts

Tick what you have already taught. The generated passage will work those patterns in on purpose, and the reader can highlight them while you read with the student. Your selection is remembered for the next passage.

Keep to taught patterns only

Controlled decodable text — the passage avoids patterns you have not ticked. Leave off to simply feature them heavily alongside normal grade-level vocabulary.

📊 Readability Grade Level

Not calculated yet — FK + ARI consensus grade level for the current passage.

🔍 Vocabulary Tier Analysis

Not analyzed yet — Tier 2 academic & Tier 3 domain-specific words worth pre-teaching (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013).

🧠 Background Knowledge

Not generated yet — optional pre-reading primer for the student.

❓ Comprehension Questions

Question type

Not generated yet — 3–4 multiple-choice questions.

Pre-Reading & Background Knowledge

Comprehension Check

5 questions aligned to CCSS ELA Reading Standards. Tap 🔊 to hear any question or answer read aloud.

Question type

Connect Google AI

About ten minutes, once. ReadBridge's AI features run on Google's Gemini and Cloud Text-to-Speech. You create a key on your own Google account and paste it below; Google bills you directly for what you use, and nothing passes through us.

Works with no key at all the card decks, syllable and morpheme drills, nonsense word study, running records and every reading tool. Set nothing up and those still work.

The key switches on passage generation and simplifying, the word-tap tools (definition, context clues, syllables, morphology), comprehension questions, PDF and photo text extraction, and read-aloud.

What it costs you pay Google, not us. A day of lessons is typically a few cents; there is no subscription and no minimum.

Once per device the key is saved in this browser on this device. Setting up a second computer or iPad means doing this again there — there is no account to sign in to.

Create the key. Open aistudio.google.com/apikey, sign in with your Google account, and press Create API key. Choose a new Google Cloud project when it asks. Write down the project name — both the next steps need that same project. If you miss it, the key list on that page shows the project beside each key, so you can come back and look. Copy the key; it starts with AQ. or AIza.
Turn on read-aloud. Open the Text-to-Speech page, check the project name at the top matches the one from step 1, and press Enable. If the button says Manage instead of Enable, it is already on — nothing to do. Read-aloud is the only feature that uses this service, and it stays silent until this is switched on; everything else works without it.
Add billing. Open Billing and link a billing account to that same project. Skipping this caps you at about 20 requests a day — less than one lesson — and, more importantly, Google's free tier lets it use what you send to improve its products. With billing on, it does not. Passages and uploads are student material, so this is a privacy decision as much as a quota one.
Paste it below and press Test & save. The two services are checked separately, so you get a line for each: Gemini for passages and word tools, Text-to-Speech for read-aloud. If one fails, the other is still switched on and the message says what to fix. Come back and press Test & save again after fixing it.

Google API key

Use a separate key for read-aloud (most people do not need this)

The key is stored in this browser on this device and is sent only to Google, on the requests it authorises. It is not encrypted and anyone using this browser profile can retrieve it, so treat the device as you would a signed-in account — and if you pass this file to someone else, remove the key first.