Starfall

Starfall Education Foundation is a non-profit organization, original created "where children have fun learning to read", but now is so much more. Specializing in reading, phonics & math the website provides educational games, movies, books, songs, and more for children from pre- kindergarten to grade 3. The website is divided into different grades, different subjects and even different learning stages. For example, reading is broken up into four sections- ABC's, Learn to Read, It's Fun to Read and I'm Reading. Starfall also has a section called Parent-Teacher Centre where you can find instructions on how to use the website, other free resources and best of all lesson plans. This section also provides customizable language practice sheets, math practice sheets, word/ picture cards, projectable books/ posters and mp3 songs and lyrics. Starfall is also super accessible, providing closed captions for the hearing impaired, dual switch devices, optional keyboard controls, screen readers, audio descriptions, and transcripts and visual descriptions.

I found out about this website from my associate teacher, she used it in her kindergarten classroom during exploration time. Two students can use the ipad and explore the site themselves. She said she even gets some lesson plan ideas from the site as well.

Some short comings I found was the website set up was a little all over the place, the pages looked too busy and might overwhelm some students. Also, the lesson plans that are provided are only for Pre- K and Kindergarten, nothing for grade one, two, or three. Starfall is also offered as an app for mobile devices, it's free but you can sign up for a membership to access the full content which is $35.

Overall, I think Starfall is a great interactive website for students to go and explore themselves but also teacher guided. Having such a variety of educational games, movies, books, songs, practice sheets and even lesson plans! 

Made possible from Sam@NU