Starfall.com, designed and maintained by Starfall Education, is a multimedia website that provides interactive lessons and learning activities to support reading skills at kindergarten and first grade levels.
Minimum system requirements stated on the website include:
- Windows 95, Macintosh OS8, or Linux
- Internet connection
- 64 MB Ram
- 200 MHz processor
- Internet Explorer 4 or Netscape 4
- Flash Player 4
Students who are English language learners can benefit from using this website. It is appropriate both for English Language Learners and for students with learning disabilities. The activities include simple, charming graphics, sound for read-alouds and phonics practice, and activities (such as puzzles) that help develop motor skills by using the mouse.The reason to introduce Starfall is that it is fun, and motivates students to practice basic skills. It uses familiar, built-in computer technologies (mousing, typing, audio, and animation) to provide students with an environment where they can safely explore and have fun while they are learning.
Research:
- Searches in the FirstSearch WilsonSelectPlus and ERIC databases at NYIT returned no references to Starfall.
- A search in Google Scholar returned several references in which the site was recommended as a resource, but no research analyzing measurable results.
- A general search in Google turned up more recommendations, but nothing substantial in the way of research to substantiate or quantify just how and how much Starfall really does help students meet their defined reading goals.
- A June, 2006 article at Interactive Multimedia Research ( http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_interactivemultimediatechnology_archive.html) states that it has “good potential for reading intervention research” and “looks impressive on an interactive white board.”
- A master’s thesis posted online at Heritage University in Washington found that Starfall.com “was a great interactive tool for intervention but this study did not show that it had a significant impact on the DIBELS NWF assessment.” (An Experimental Study: Improving First Grade Nonsense Word Fluency with Starfall Computer Intervention, J. Lee, Summer 2007, accessed at http://www.heritage.edu/library/mastersprojects/Lee_Jen_2007.pdf, 10/18/2007.
Benefits and Recommendation:
This tool provides, at the very least, a chance for children to enjoy activities that support their development as readers and writers, I would definitely recommend working with this tool to find ways that it can support positive outcomes in literacy scores, including alternative assessment goals. In an inclusion setting, I have found that children who are far behind their peers in literacy, whether they are ELLs or IEP students, are happy to have something that engages them while the rest of their class is moving forward with publishing or other computer activities. In fact, the general ed students are sometimes jealous of students who are using Starfall.
Reflection on Using Starfall.com at PS/MS 4:
Starfall.com is one of the most appealing educational support systems to sweep the computer lab at my school. I first heard of it last year from an ESL teacher. She was using it with recently arrived immigrant children who had never attended school in their home country. It’s animated features seemed engaging enough, and it has no fees or even a login, so I added it to my PortaPortal page as a “learning center” activity for ELLs.
This year, a special ed teacher brought Starfall.com to my attention as a solution for helping her grade 6/7 students, all of whom who are reading at a first grade level. She has managed to get all of her students exempted from state tests, so they can now focus on the basic literacy skills they so sorely need. She discovered the abandoned SmartBoard languishing in a closet on her floor, and her class now enjoys interactive lessons that include the activities on Starfall.com. At her request, this class now focuses on Starfall.com in the computer lab to practice the literacy skills they are learning in class. Back in the classroom, their learning is further supported by the journals and other materials their teacher has purchased for them.
Starfall.com is a free website that provides a variety of interactive learning experiences to support emergent literacy skills. Phonics experts have emphasized the benefit of employing multiple pathways to the brain for teaching the letter-sound combinations that children need to internalize before reading comprehension can happen. Visual, aural, and kinesthetic interaction can all be employed to help children acquire language skills. Starfall connects with all three pathways – it provides animated images, repetitive sounds, and kinesthetic interaction via the mouse (a touch screen would make it even better). Reading books and writing journals are available for purchase to provide further visual and kinesthetic reinforcement. The Starfall Store also offers games, pencils, stuffed animals, and, of course, stickers.
The variety of engaging learning experiences is impressive. Students can practice individual letter sounds, construct words, build sentences, and read stories with the help of a narrator. A variety of creative projects are available with the same kind of narration – calendars, greeting cards, and graphic manipulatives contribute to hand/eye coordination, including basic “mousing” skills. The range of literary genres available include plays, comics, folk tales, and Chinese fables. Math, social studies and science topics are included in the interactive projects. As I am an avid birdwatcher, I am especially fond of the bird riddles. As an art lover, I am especially impressed by the art gallery, which includes a couple of artists I did not know about.
Some of the fun activities help me assess organizational, analytical, and even mousing skills that are not reflected in standardized tests. One example was a very simple word puzzle. The student was having trouble matching scrambled puzzles pieces to the finished puzzle diagram, even though the shapes were drawn in the correct positions in the diagram, with the words showing. He didn’t seem to understand how to match the words, and kept trying pieces at random. I pointed out that two pieces had corners, which I thought would be the easiest to match, but again he didn’t seem to understand, although he did seem to recognize the corners as right angles. Another student was having trouble putting icons for three stages of plant growth in the correct order. I thought the problem was that he had no understanding of how seeds grow. When I modeled how to move the icons, a light went on and he said he didn’t realize that he was supposed to put them in order.
There is another feature even my colleagues had not yet discovered: the sign language lessons in the ABCs section. As I was clicking around, I saw an icon that looked like hands, and then the next thing I knew, the gentle cartoon character was teaching me the hand position for any letter I chose along the bottom of the screen. It was the first time I had ever tried any sign language. I was experiencing for myself the way this charming website uses deceptively simple graphics to sweeten the essential drill-and-kill that builds fluency in language skills. Now I know why my students from Ms. O’s class are smiling when they visit this website.
Still, this site deserves a deeper investigation to determine how it can be worked into a relentlessly “data-driven” and “research-based” instructional program that requires tightly scripted and timed lesson components. How can the “independent practice” time students spend meet the exact “conferencing” requirements (including a mandated chart format) designed to provide evidence of every word exchanged between teacher and student?
Finally, there is one serious limitation to Starfall: the content is designed exclusively for younger students. For most of my students in self-contained special education classes, this does not appear to be a problem; their emotional and cognitive levels seem to be fairly close. For many of the middle school students whose reading readiness would benefit from the basic skill levels in Starfall, the content is just too juvenile. In most cases, however, these older students seem to have fun relaxing with the baby stuff anyway, even if they say they are checking it out just to be able to use with their younger siblings.
3 comments:
I use Starfall weekly with my Kindergarten classes in the Computer Lab. During a lesson, we sit around the smart board, manipulate three letter activities and one of the stories. After a few more weeks of modeling the use of the website, I will allow them to work independently on their computers.
I like how Starfall uses animation and manipulative activities to introduce phonics and decoding. My problem with Starfall is: there is no interactive aspect. The website does not know if my students are repeating the sentences or words. I do this with the whole class so that we can add an oral aspect to our learning. I expect them to continue to "talk back" to the website when they are working independently.
When I taught in a Collaborative Team Teaching (CTT) first grade setting, I would use Starfall for two struggling readers. During independent reading time, they would use the Starfall website to review the letter sounds we learned during out phonics lessons. If I have the chance again, I would add an assessment component to their website viewing.
Matt Willard
I think it is a great website and I especially liked the Learn to read section. I think it would be great for young ESL students. The content would be great even for my High School ESL students but I think I'd have difficulty getting them past the youthful graphics. The riddles and the multicultural stories were appealing and I might just try some with my 9th grade ELLs. Thanks.
I actually went on the site and tried it out. I loved it. It is not just a great IT tool, but it can be used with struggling readers as well as students who are learning to read. Also, it provides the list of words just as any basals, so that when students swith there are no differences.
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