I chose the www.starfall.com website because I was intrigued with Patrick Manyak's presentation of the site in class. A parent in my class said that another elementary school uses it with their primary grade students in their computer lab. She asked me if we were using the program, and I told her I just found out about it in my Master's class the previous week. I assured her I would be putting my Kindergartners on the site.
The site has interactive talking story books that help emergent readers to decode words. I liked the alphabet activities associating letters and sounds. These activities also foster phonemic awareness and word recognition.
The site offers free printed materials to use with the multimedia presentations on the computer.
This site is just another medium I can use to reinforce my literacy lessons. I am currently using Saxon Phonics, and the Macmillan McGraw-Hill basal reading series.
Our school lost our Josten's learning lab software last year because it was outdated. The computer technicians refused to service the older computers. This was a big loss to the primary grade students because they loved going to the computer lab two times a week for a half hour.
Our school has not been able to afford another educational software program this year because we are not a Title 1 school. Therefore, I am really excited about using these websites to replace our older educational software. I'm not sure how focused I will be able to be with 17 Kindergartners on the computers but I am going to give it a shot.
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Hi Dixie,
This site is fantastic! I have used it both when teaching kindergarten and now with kindergarten and first grade students in my computer classes. The kids love it and become independent users very quickly. One thing, I would recommend when teaching a large group to navigate the site would be to show everyone on a SmartBoard or simply project it on to a white wall. We practiced "clicking on the sparkley arrow", finding the ABC's, and "clicking on the red X" several times before I turned them loose. This site is also exciting in that it has new features almost every time students visit the site. I felt that with the strong audio and repititon, that my students almost learned as much from Starfall as they did from me. Have fun and good luck!
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