Starfall.com: Where children have fun leaning to read!

Starfall.com is an educational website geared toward elementary school children in grades K-2 who are learning how to read in English. The site is intended to deliver research-based reading instruction including systematic phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

The front page of the site consists of links to activities categorized by reading level: ABC’s, Learn to Read, It’s Fun to Read, and I’m Reading. The graphics and bold colors are appealing to children and the site is very easy to navigate. The ABC’s section focuses on letter-sound relationships with activities for each letter of the alphabet. Learn to Read concentrates on explicit phonics instruction by introducing three-letter consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. The 15 lessons allow the students to create words, hear the sounds and words together, listen to a story, and watch a movie based on specific skills such as vowels, silent ‘e’, and chunking. It’s Fun to Read centers on activities that let students create a story with guiding prompts utilizing vocabulary words. I’m Reading contains links to numerous stories such as plays, comics, folk tales, myths, and fables. All of the activities give the student immediate feedback on their work by indicating if the answer is right or wrong.

The site also has resources for parents/teachers to utilize with each reading stage in the Download Center. For example, reading and writing journals, cut-up/take-home books, ABC printouts, phonics puzzle activities, and other online book printouts. All of the supplemental materials are directly related to the online activities. The cut-up/take-home books contain a print out of the same story the students read during the Learn to Read activities. The reading and writing journals and ABC printouts focus on the skills from ABC’s and Learn to Read such as short and long vowel sounds and allow the students extra written practice with these skills.

With resources for educators and parents, this website is definitely a useful tool for students to practice and engage in emergent literacy learning activities. The Educators page explains every one of the strategies used to teach phonics in all of the activities. It also includes a Scope & Sequence chart which lists the words, objectives, and skills for each lesson. The Parent page contains instructions/guidelines for using the website and how to supplement the student’s learning with the external documents.

Overall, I think that this is an excellent educational resource to use in the classroom and would be a valuable supplemental tool for ELLs at varying levels. However, to improve the website I would suggest they also have links to other reading activities that incorporate authentic texts and include a more balanced approach instead of just concentrating on phonics. Phonics is an integral part of language learning, but I feel it is best when it is incorporated into the whole language approach.