starfall education foundation non profit

This award-winning phonics game is completely free to use on a PC and an app can be purchased relatively inexpensively for use with tablets. However, overall it’s a fabulous resource. Reading Bear introduces some things in a different order than we do in our own reading programmes, and we’re not keen on the silent e section (we introduce these words as split letter teams). It wasn’t around when we were teaching our own kids to read, but if it had been, we would have definitely used it. The site was developed by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia and is supported by a non-profit organisation. There are also review presentations for each section which is really helpful. For example, words can be sounded out and blended slowly or quickly and there is an option to let the child sound out each word first before the presenter says it. The presentations are available in several different versions. The videos also help children to understand the meaning of each word, so the site improves vocabulary and comprehension alongside phonics skills, which is fantastic. This site contains around 50 presentations that introduce the main phonics rules using a combination of videos and interactive slide shows. These also contain interesting and useful resources and our children found these enjoyable too. There are other free sections on the site for more advanced readers such as ‘ It’s Fun to Read’ and ‘ I’m Reading’. Starfall isn’t a comprehensive reading programme in its own right, but it is certainly a good way to provide variety and reinforce key ideas. They liked to click on the words after they had read them to see if they had sounded them out correctly. We would read some of the trickier words to our children and ask them to read others that were appropriate for their phonics skills at the time. The words in the stories gradually get more complex as you move from one story to the next which means you can move on to the more difficult ones as your child’s phonics skills improve. They particularly liked interacting with characters like Zac the Rat, Peg the Hen and Gus the Duck. Our children really enjoyed using these activities when they were learning to read. Some of the games also help with spelling as your child has to choose the right letters to complete words.

Many of the words are also sounded out phonetically for your child. Your child can click on different words and objects in the stories and some of them become animated. The Learn to Read section contains multisensory and interactive stories and games. There isn’t a lot of guidance about how to use the activities on the site, but they are quite easy to get the hang of. You need to pay for an annual membership and mobile app if you want to access all of the content, but there are plenty of great free resources on there so this isn’t essential.

The site is supported by the Starfall Education Foundation, a non-profit organization. This is just one section of a larger site that contains a variety of free literacy activities and some free mathematics activities too.

Starfall education foundation non profit