Starfall Reading and Math

     My students are exposed to Starfall within my classroom and during Computer time. They love Starfall! They were taught in Computer how to access it and have gotten very good at navigating the site.

     Starfall is a great introduction to phonics, such as letter sounds, for young students. At the beginning of the year, my kids experienced Letter Bootcamp for 26 days and I supplemented instruction with Starfall videos. Each letter has a letter sound video, which teaches the letter sound, letter name, and words that begin with that sound. At the end of each video there is a game that allows them to practice their knowledge of that letters sound. Often it is a letter identification game or a beginning sound game for each specific letter. My kids loved playing the games at the end and often the videos were very quirky and silly, which kept their attention.

   
     Also, I liked that the books that are available on Starfall, correlate with one or two word families. The first half of the year, the kindergarten team focused heavily on word families. During reading groups, the students would either be on Lexia or reading a book on Starfall. The books on Starfall can be read independently or it allows the students to click on a speaker button, and it will read the text to them. At the end of the book, there would be a word family game. For example, if the book focused on -an and -at word families, the game would involve those word families as well. The games have students make words included in the word families. It shows them a picture of an object and the students have to put the beginning sound on the word chunk. It is great for developing phonological awareness.

     I, also, use Starfall during math workshop as a station. Most recently, my students have been learning addition, so we have been using the addition games. The games have students create addition sentences by matching numbers to the groups.

     The only downfall to Starfall, is that it is not completely free. My school has a subscription, so I have access to all of the features, but if you do not there are some videos and features that you will not be able to access. Overall, I really enjoy Starfall and recommend it, especially for use during ELA time. This is how I utilize Starfall within my classroom, but there are many other features. Some that, maybe, I'm not even aware of. If you know of any other useful features for Starfall, please comment below!