The Starfall Team

Starfall is an engaging, interactive website that is easily accessible for parents and children. The site provides teacher and parent resources for additional child scaffolding. The layout is organized and structured based on the reading level of individual children. There are four main categories titled ABCs, Learn to Read, Fun to Read, I’m Reading. Each category becomes increasingly more rigorous through phonetic awareness, providing a recording of phonetic sounds, word recognition, vocabulary, fluency, and reading narrative and informative text. In addition to categories, the home page site provides additional activities including fun holiday activities.… (meer)

Starfall uses age-appropriate graphics to introduce early literacy skills, including letter recognition and phonetic awareness. The website is divided into four main portals by literacy level, each of which has corresponding activities. The beginning level teaches the letters of the alphabet through animations and there is also a sign language element in which a cartoon girl says letter names and signs the letters. In the third level, users have several content choices, including to explore masterpieces, read riddles about birds, and perform magic tricks, among other things. There are many interactive components of this site, including customizable avatars and phonics word games.

The site uses multicultural avatars and engaging animations, but the flash site often takes several seconds to load, which may be frustrating for children to sit through. The images are done in a traditional, two-dimensional cartoon style. They are very basic, but still pleasing. Some of the activities require using the mouse to pick up and move items, but users do not have to hold down the mouse button to drag items. This is great for young users who may have difficulty with the coordination required to click, hold, and drag.
The approach of Starfall is educational in a fun, engaging way. It is best for early literacy and beginning reading practice, for up to third grade. It is a great resource for elementary classrooms and libraries as well as children's department websites of public libraries.

*Review co-authored with Katie Ringenbach, Hilary Savage, and Lara Pollack… (meer)

Starfall.com is a website directed towards early readers. It is full of fun activities for the pre-reader and the new reader. The website includes four main levels ‘ABCs Getting Ready to Read,’ ‘Learn To Read,’ ‘It’s Fun to Read,’ and ‘I’m Reading.’ The levels get progressively more challenging as the reader advances to the next level. The ‘ABCs Getting Ready to Read’ level includes interactive games that pronounce phonetic sounds, include sentences with the highlighted letter, and provide contextual clues with pictures. For example an upper and lowercase ‘U’ would appear on the screen along with the phonetic sound. An image of an umbrella character appeared along with bolded words reading ‘under the umbrella.’ The next level, ‘Learn to Read,’ includes stories that read and sound out each word with contextual clues of interactive, dancing characters that sing about their names and phonetic sounds. ‘It’s Fun to Read’ allows the child to create their own story and illustrations by choosing words colorful words and artwork. The most challenging level, ‘I’m Reading,’ provides audio scaffolding for a variety of stories including fiction, nonfiction, comics Greek myths, fables, etc. The entire website has interesting games and activities that provide opportunities for early readers to improve their reading. The website is easy to navigate and visually attractive. One challenge is the distracting advertisements on the side of the pages.… (meer)