Starfall!

Starfall is an educational website designed for Pre-K through 2nd grade students, as well as English Language Learners, that helps children learn to read through phonics. The website uses a phonics approach in addition to focusing on phonemic awareness practice to aid students in learning to read the English language.

www.starfall.com

*All Screenshots taken on my own computer from the Starfall website*

How Does It Work?

The site is structured to categorize the activities students will be doing based on their ability levels. On the left hand side you can see the 4 options, beginning with the “ABCs Let’s get ready to read option” and ending with the “I’m Reading” option. In this way, the students are working with material that is at their ability level and meets the needs of the students specifically.  The website offers many different activities that include word matching and recognition, and most of the text is read aloud to the students as the words are hilighted. This aids struggling readers in their journey to become better readers as well. Many of the reading activities on this website are structured like games, making it fun for the students to engage in.

How Do I Use It In The Classroom?

I have seen Starfall used in a Kindergarten field placement during center time. A group of four students would go to the computers and begin working on the website. This website is something the teacher must model to the students how to use, and show them the resources they will be working with. What’s great about this website is that the students have many options in terms of the activities they wish to engage with. There are tons of different games students can play while learning to read, and it is not the same exact activity each day they use it. For example, when selecting the “It’s Fun to Read” category, the students have a list of topic choices they can choose to work with. 

What About The Common Core?

The activities the website offers are aligned with the Common Core. The website breaks down the standards that align with each activity, giving a link to each one so you have the opportunity to look at it and determine the use of it. For example, when looking at Foundational Skills and Phonemic Awareness for first grade reading, More Phonics Units 1-8 cover standards RF.1.2a, RF.1.2b, RF.1.2c, and RF.1.2. To see more of the specific first grade standards met, visit http://more2.starfall.com/info/first-common-core.php?ref=demo

How About Assessment?

While I don’t believe there is a way to monitor what students are working on and keep track of it, the activities are interactive and let students know if they have done something incorrectly. Since these activities are geared toward individual student use, it would be hard to watch a whole classroom of students working on computers at the same time. Therefore, I think the strategies used in the activities on the site could be modified to be physically used in the classroom as a whole group lesson. This could also be done on the smartboard, giving each student the chance to interact with it while being able to quickly check of the skills the student has and still needs to improve upon. 

References

Starfall’s Learn to Read with phonics. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://starfall.com