# School Writing - learn the abc — Shapes, abc, numbers & words

> Interactive handwriting app for learning letters, numbers, and words with custom lessons. (iPhone/iPad app by demografix pty ltd.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/school-writing-learn-the-abc/id498416451 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [demografix pty ltd](https://appshunter.io/developer/474374501)
- Category: Education, Productivity
- Price: $2.99 (on sale, was $4.99)
- Rating: 2.00/5 from 2 App Store ratings · 10 written reviews indexed
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 9.0 · 163 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2012-04-12
- Data updated: 2026-06-10
- Monetization: paid
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/school-writing-learn-the-abc/id498416451/reviews.md

## What is School Writing?

An education created app that contains the education approved fonts for your school, including individual plain and cursive letters, used in the United States of America schools – Zaner-Bloser and D'Nealian. Available on the Apple 50% Discount Education Volume Purchase Program.

Wonderful ***** by K Tchr
As a kindergarten teacher, and parent of a kindergarten and preschool child, I love this app! It teaches D'Nealian, which is an introduction to learning cursive. I love that there are thoroughly thought through lessons to break writing into chunks for students. Leaves that student in the exact place they left off, awards the student stars for job well done on each part of the lesson, and gives immediate feedback if a student needs improvement. Brought this to my Assistant Principal to use school wide.

A must have for every parent and teacher ***** by mrsnic123
Students just love this app. They love the different colour choices and the replay button. Definitely seen positive results with students with fine motor difficulties. Congratulations on a great app.

Must-Have for all schools ***** by Aunty_Vegemite
Brilliant App that is more than just a hand writing App. It can also be used in just about any curriculum area. Incredibly easy to make my own word lists with pictures and sounds.

Students intuitively trace pre-handwriting shapes, uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, words or whiteboard images with the touch of a finger or using the Apple Pencil. Hear and see letters, words and numbers with optional customized associated images and sounds.

With tracing accuracy turned on to easy, medium or hard the students are rewarded with a half or full star depending on their accuracy. They are given three attempts before automatically advancing to the next letter or number. The default teacher tracings or your customisations of the teacher tracings are used as the basis for checking the students tracing accuracy. This allows for complete flexibility over stroke direction for left hand writers. Teacher tracing also offers the ability to record audio for letter sounds and tracing instructions.

School Writing allows the teacher or parent to create lessons, with written instructions, unique images and audio instructions, to which the student can respond using written and audio recordings. This 'open scaffold' enables the lessons to be words, numbers or symbols and extends the use of School Writing far beyond early education. Completed lessons can be automatically emailed to the teacher or parent with the student’s tracings and recordings included.

The ‘Whiteboard’ section allows a teacher to draw or import images, with unique audio instructions for tracing or interacting with. Students can trace and record audio answers. It is also the pre handwriting activities in conjunction with the EduColouring activity within the app.

Create, save and share your own ‘Word’ lessons, profiles and customisations to suit your curriculum, with complete control over the management of the lessons, the app and the student profiles. Full import and export functions are included for iPad classrooms including Airdrop file transfer, email, iTunes, dropbox or sending the lessons to the demografix website for public access.

Lock the app into a restricted student mode. In student mode, word lessons cannot be created or deleted and profiles cannot be changed. Students have no access to the app settings when a teacher PIN is set.
Each student can have a unique profile.

To share your experiences, ideas or request support, contact us :
e : support@demografix.com.au
fb : www.facebook.com/demografix.pty.ltd
t : twitter.com/demografix_au
w : www.demografix.com.au
ytube : www.youtube.com/demografixapps

Available as Apple Education Volume purchasing at 50% off for 20 copies or more.

## Key features

- Approved school fonts (Zaner-Bloser, D'Nealian)
- Interactive tracing with finger or Apple Pencil
- Customizable lessons with images and audio
- Immediate feedback and star rewards
- Progress tracking and email reports
- Whiteboard and coloring activities

## Recent user reviews (10 of 10)

All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/school-writing-learn-the-abc/id498416451/reviews.md

### 2/5 — Huge fuzzy trace line turns everything written into solid blobs

*2018-01-16*

The app has potential. Unfortunately the very thick fuzzy trace line left behind as you write makes the app next to useless. Lower-case letters appear as a blob

**Developer response:** Hi
You can set the thickness of the pen by selecting another color to trace with.

### 2/5 — Too precise

*2015-06-04*

Far too difficult and precise for pre-k and kindergarten . I had difficulty as an adult. Needs better rewards. Bells and whistles. 
Very disappointing.

**Developer response:** Bells and whistles are coming in the next version. Stay tuned... :-)

### 5/5 — Great

*2014-03-13*

This app is great for working on printing. You can differentiate this app to work with a wide variety of students - preprinting skills to tracing/printing sight words.

### 5/5 — Great tool!

*2013-11-16*

School Writing is a must have app for every parent or clinician teaching older preschoolers to elementary students on how to write. From beginning learners to kids learning cursive, this app has it all. It covers a multitude of writing fonts that would fit into any curriculum, as well as comprehensive settings for customization for each user. Progressive lessons help kids gain skills needed for handwriting into manageable "chunks" and they are laid out in a logical sequence to ensure integration of the material. Both visual and auditory cues are provided and you are able to add your own voice recording. A really neat feature is being able to import lessons, photos, and make spelling lists that can be tailored to other areas of study. A child's progress can be exported to email, dropbox or iTunes file sharing for parents and teachers to share. Support for using the app is above and beyond, and you can tell this developer believes and stands behind their work. They are very responsive and even have a website for help with the app. Highly Recommended.

### 1/5 — Cursive is incorrect

*2013-10-24*

Do not buy this app. The cursive practice is incorrect. Each letter in a word is disconnected to the next letter. Your child will not learn how to connect individual letters to make one word. The guidelines are too small. I wasted $5.

**Developer response:** The app never claimed to do 'joined' words. It is individual cursive letters mainly.

### 4/5 — Good app but "easy" is NOT easy

*2013-09-05*

I am a homeschooler, and I downloaded this app to help reinforce correct letter formation for my kids.  And I really like it.  I like how easy it is to switch to cursive.  I like the flexibility of the whiteboards.  However, I have a couple problems.  The first, and by far the most important, is that the "easy" setting is far too hard.  On the "easy" setting, my 5 year old never gets her letters right, and my 7 year old gets his right only half the time.  This is tears-producing frustrating to them.  "Easy" should be much, much easier.  When kids are just beginning, sloppiness isn't important; correct methodology is.  All I care about is whether they start in the right spot, proceed in the right direction, and make the correct number of pencil-strokes for each letter.  Wobbly letters should still be correct on the "easy" level.  If the developers are unable to fix this problem, I will probably abandon this app for one more suitable for beginners.  

My second problem is that selecting between profiles is not very intuitive.  It would make more sense to have all the profiles displayed on a different screen and selected before seeing the activity list.

My third problem is that there appears to be a bug when creating your own custom whiteboard assignment.  I think it was as I was adding "pages" to a whiteboard assignment that I attempted to click on a tiny icon that looked like a "settings" type of icon, and this caused the app to crash.  This happened every time I clicked that icon.  So I overcame my curiosity to know what it did and stayed away from that icon.

Thank you.

### 1/5 — A Great Idea, Poorly Tested and Executed

*2013-03-05*

Wow.  The touch targets work only part of the time.  I can't even select a different profile.  Was this tested at all?  Switches in settings sometimes work, sometimes not.

### 5/5 — Wonderful

*2013-01-12*

As a kindergarten teacher, and parent of a kindergarten and preschool child, I love this app! It teaches D'Nealian, which is an introduction to learning cursive. I love that there are thoroughly thought through lessons to break writing into chunks for students. Leaves that student in the exact place they left off, awards the student stars for job well done on each part of the lesson, and gives immediate feedback if a student needs improvement. Brought this to my Assistant Principal to use school wide.

### 4/5 — Great app

*2012-10-17*

We created lists for my kindergartener's sight words and love that he can push the sound button and hear me say and sound out the word. The only thing missing is the accuracy feature for tracing. I would have given this app five stars if it had an accuracy feature.

### 5/5 — Wow, using the iPad technologies!

*2012-05-13*

I was lucky enough to purchase School Writing app to trial with my class. After only two weeks of playing around with it, I feel I am only beginning to uncover the possibilities of how this fantastic app can be used with my students.

School Writing is a well-designed and thoughtfully planned app that can be used to assist children in developing handwriting, word recognition and spelling skills.

The app is comprehensive and packed with useful features but is still simple to use.

On first downloading and opening this app I was pleasantly surprised that it allowed me to quickly and easily add enough users for my entire class, as well as a “teacher” user that I created so I could play with the app myself and become more familiar with its many features.

School Writing comes preloaded with plenty of lessons to keep a class busy for a long time, but then it also allows teachers to create their own lessons to suit a particular focus or need.
Even though the name suggests that it is for teaching and practising writing skills only, it has prewriting activities (traceable shapes, mazes and dot to dots) as well as some numeral activities.
For early learners, the app could be used to develop tracing skills, numeral and letter recognition and formation skills. Some of the preloaded activities include lists of Dolch words, word lists based around sounds and pairs of opposites.

For print fonts there is also a choice between solid, dotted or outlines with starting points marked in.

I used this app in my classroom with some of my struggling spellers. I was quickly and easily able to add in my weekly spelling list and had the option of replacing some or all of the letters with dashes to make it more challenging, as well as recording the spoken word, with a sentence if preferred. This gave them an opportunity to practise their writing at the same time as their spelling. As soon as they finished the lesson, the app emailed me a file that I can view on my computer to check to see how they went.

Adding the list to one iPad with multiple users was a very simple process, and with the ability to import and export word lists via the demografix website, DropBox or iTunes, adding the weekly spelling list to multiple iPads is probably relatively painless too.

My brain is ticking over with the possible applications for this app in my own classroom in the future. Having individualised spelling lists in the past has been difficult to administer and time-consuming, but with this app it would be possible to set up customised lists. If the words were entered as blanks and the word and sentence was recorded in the app, then my students could take their spelling tests on their own and they would be emailed to me once they were done. This would mean that the students who worked more quickly would not be frustrated while waiting for the slower ones to finish and the child who invariably doesn’t hear the word due to distractions and is three words behind the rest of the class every week could listen to the word as many times as they needed and not feel pressured by everyone else who needs to move on. Also, any child who was out at the time of the test could take it at another time.

Lessons to focus on word families and rhyming would be a cinch to create using School Writing.
The ability to record the student’s voice enables teachers to assess sight word recognition, or oral sentence construction using a list of words as well.

Because of the number of ways that this app can be customised, its application in the classroom or for home learning is extremely flexible and I am sure that as I become more familiar with the range of settings, I will find many more ways to use the School Writing app to support my learners.

## Frequently asked questions about School Writing

### What learning styles does School Writing support?

School Writing supports visual and kinesthetic learning styles through its interactive tracing features and audio instructions. It provides immediate feedback and rewards, catering to students who benefit from direct reinforcement.

### Can I create custom lessons in School Writing?

Yes, School Writing allows teachers and parents to create custom lessons with written instructions, unique images, and audio. This flexibility extends its use beyond early education to various curriculum areas.

### How does School Writing track student progress?

The app awards students stars based on tracing accuracy, with options for easy, medium, or hard difficulty. Completed lessons with tracings and recordings can be automatically emailed to parents or teachers.

### Is School Writing suitable for left-handed writers?

Yes, School Writing offers complete flexibility over stroke direction, making it suitable for left-hand writers. The default teacher tracings can be customized to accommodate different writing styles.

### What is the price of School Writing?

School Writing is available for a one-time purchase of $2.99. It is also eligible for the Apple 50% Discount Education Volume Purchase Program.

### Does School Writing have ads?

No, School Writing is ad-free, providing an uninterrupted learning experience for children.

### What devices is School Writing compatible with?

School Writing is currently supported on iPads. It was last updated on April 29, 2021, with version 3.1.

### What age rating does School Writing have?

School Writing has an age rating of 4+, making it appropriate for preschoolers and early elementary school children.

## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 3.1 — 2021-04-29

Thanks to the Western Academy of Beijing for alerting us to a bug that we have fixed in this build.
We have also done a performance update and a general enhancement to the app.

### 3.0 — 2021-02-15

- Thanks for using School Writing and helping to make it one of the most popular education apps.
- General bug fixes and optimisation for the latest iPad’s and the latest iOS.
- Added a fun abc colouring in activity as optional via the settings.
- All good to go. If you find a bug please email us at bugs@demografix.com.au :-)

### 2.10 — 2017-12-15

• Added all the letter sounds that play when the 'Learn' button is tapped on the main student tracing screen.
You can customise and replace these sounds and the 'teacher traces' to suit you. We build great apps "-)

Left Hand Writers...
For left hand writers the app has the feature to enable you to redo and customize the 'teacher trace'.  Main Screen>Customize.
This includes the way the letter is written and the order of the strokes to cater for left hand writers.
You can replace and customize the default letter sounds as required.

### 2.9 — 2017-12-10

Lot's new and improved and we have cleaned up a few bugs we found under some cupboards.
Technical enhancements such as iOS11, dropbox and other areas to make the app function better. 

As requested by our happy app users, new enhancements such as ...
• Function enhancements to 'Teacher Tracing' screen to enable 'Replay' to show the strokes of the teacher trace.
• Added a new Guideline as 'Solid line under character'.
• Added a new feature to automatically create a 'My name' word lesson based on the active profile name.
• Added a new large lowercase character option for infants in PrePrep and Prep. This will turn 'Check tracing accuracy' to Off when selected. You can turn the tracing accuracy back on and we recommend  the 'Infant' selection. 
• Added new options to customise and add the 'incorrect trace' sound.

The new large lowercase letters student traces allows you to replay the 'student trace' to see the strokes taken. 

Thanks to all our users.

### 2.8 — 2014-11-11

Thanks for using our app!

• We added Airdrop support for iOS 7 and above for iPad (4th generation or later), iPad Mini and to share with people using a Mac with Yosemite. Checkout youtube.com/demografixapps for a demo on using Airdrop. 
Thanks Apple, we love it!

• Squashed a bug and added a few enhancements.

Please take a moment to leave a review on iTunes, they help us... :-)
You can also email updates@demografix.com.au comments and feedback.
Keep up to date with us on facebook.com/demografix.pty.ltd

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-06-10.*