Poppins Learning Comes to the United States

Today we are opening Poppins Learning to families and schools across the United States. Poppins is an educational reading app, built with neuroscientists, that turns daily reading practice into a game a child actually wants to come back to. After years of work and study in Europe, we are bringing it here.

This is a simple arrival note: what Poppins is, who it helps, and the research behind it, told plainly and without overselling.

What Poppins Learning is

Poppins is a rhythm-based reading practice. In short daily sessions of about 20 minutes, a child works through game-like challenges set to music and rhythm, so the practice feels like play while it trains the timing that reading leans on. Exercises adapt to the child’s level, staying challenging without becoming overwhelming.

It was designed around how children with dyslexia actually learn, pairing rhythm and music with multisensory reading exercises rather than more of the same drilling. The rhythm is both the point and the hook: it is what makes children want to keep going, day after day.

Who it helps

Poppins is built for two audiences at once. For families, it is a calm daily habit a child can do at home, on their own, in a few minutes a day. For K-6 schools and reading specialists, it is a research-backed way for students to keep practicing between sessions, in a format they enjoy.

It is designed to sit alongside great teaching and specialist support, not to replace it. If you are concerned about your child’s reading, a teacher or reading specialist is still the right first call. Poppins supports the daily practice around that.

The research behind it

Poppins has been studied in two randomized clinical trials. We think being precise about what each one shows matters more than a bold headline.

• The published trial (n=151). In a randomized controlled trial published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal, 2025, children who practiced with Poppins showed gains in reading fluency and reading speed compared with a control game (about +5.05 and +5.44 words, p < 0.05). In candor: the study’s pre-registered primary measure, reading made-up words, did not separate from the control. The fluency and speed measures did.
• The larger trial (n=306). A second, larger randomized trial compared Poppins plus weekly reading-specialist sessions against weekly sessions alone. It is registered and its results are final, but it has not yet been peer-reviewed or published, so we describe it as tested, never "published."

That second trial is the one we find most honest to point to, because the comparison was against real, high-quality support rather than a waitlist or a placebo app. Children who added Poppins to their weekly specialist sessions progressed further than children who had the weekly sessions alone. The effect was additive: Poppins did not replace the specialist, it added practice time in the right direction, and roughly doubled reading progress over the study window.

For schools and districts

Alongside the family launch, we are inviting K-6 schools and districts to join early pilot partnerships. A pilot is a chance to see how Poppins fits into your reading blocks and intervention time, with support from our team along the way.

If you lead reading instruction or intervention at a school or district, you can learn more on our Schools page. And if you want the deeper story on why rhythm and reading are so closely linked, we wrote it up in the science behind Poppins.

What comes next

We are starting small and honest, in families’ hands and in a first set of school pilots, and learning as we go. If you want to be part of the early US chapter, the best way in is to try the daily practice yourself and tell us what your child thinks.