Starfall.com

Hi, everyone!

I have been working with a website called Starfall.com. You can find it here --> http://www.starfall.com/

This is how it looks like:

Starfall.com is a free home site for children which have English as its first or second language. The site has four different alternatives to choose from; ABC - Let's get ready to read, Learn to read - Zac the rat and other tales, It's fun to read- About me, art gallery, magic and more, I'm reading - Plays, nonfiction, comics and more. There are more things to do on this website, like look at the calendar, read stories, make postcards and so on. This is what Starfall.com has written about themselves:

“Starfall.com opened in September of 2002 as a free public service to teach children to read with phonics. Our systematic phonics approach, in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice, is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, special education, homeschool, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL). Starfall is an educational alternative to other entertainment choices for children”.

I would like to show you the alternative "It's fun to read". When you press on that button you will come to a site that looks like this:

Then press on the button "Magic", and it will look like this:

Then press on the button "Magic Hat Trick" and it will look like this:

Now a voce will speak and read the same sentence as the one at the bottom of the page. The voice will tell you what to do. I tried it out with my nephew who is seven years old; he has not started with English in school yet. He understood what to do and thought it was really funny. He said many times like: "Jaha, så cow är ko", and a lot of other words he learned. I asked him afterwards if he remembered the words in Swedish when I said them in English, and he did!

This is just one example of what you can do on the website. What you can do on starfall.com is unlimited. You can find everything there! What you need to use starfall.com is of course a computer. In every classroom there should be a computer, sadly there is not one each for the children.

It may seem like this is a website that can only be used by students, but a teacher can use this site in many ways. For example, if the teacher has an interactive board he/she can show the site for the students and they can play together or why not read stories. I would highly recommend reading stories this way. The students will see both pictures and letters as the same time as they hear someone read. If you want to you can also repeat words or explain them because it is you who decides when to switch pages.

Considerations

Starfall.com also has an app you can download to your smartphone. Not all of the games are included, only the ABC part. There is also a link on the website where you can find more exercises for smaller children, but if the children have English as their second language I believes it suits beginners in first to third grade. Here you can find nursery rimes, colors and math songs. You find it here --> http://more.starfall.com/

I believe this is a website that we all can enjoy. I hope you will check it out and find it useful.

Finally, I wish you a happy new year!

//Emmy Lundberg