Starfall FREE

Starfall is a comprehensive collection of texts and activities for developing young users’ early literacy and numeracy skills. On the app’s main screen, there is a wide variety of songs, texts, and activities for users to engage. Each piece of content uses vivid images coupled with simple directions, which makes engaging the content intuitive. Many of the math activities require users to respond to questions. If users respond incorrectly, the app lets them answer again. Other activities present text – songs, stories, tongue twisters, and poems – to users, and the app typically presents both the text and a narration of the text.

Please Note: Users can only access a limited amount of the app’s content for free. Users must subscribe to the app by becoming a member to access all of its the content.

Instructional Ideas

1. Teachers can put students in small groups and have them all view a story or song in this app. Afterwards, teachers can ask the group members to summarize the text and have them explain what they liked or did not like about the text. As teachers and students discuss, teachers need to have students refer to the text to support their responses.
2. Teachers can have students select a book from the “Talking Library” and have the app read it to them. After the app reads a sentence, teachers can require students to read back the sentence to the app. This activity will help develop students’ word recognition and fluency skills.
3. To begin building their numeracy skills, teachers can have students complete the math-based activities. As they do, teachers can ask students what they learned. As students progress, teachers can transfer students to practice the skills they learned from the app to paper-and-pencil based activities.
4. To begin engaging the app on a personal level, teachers can have students tap the “Child” icon and complete the “Who Am I” activity, which requires students to input information about themselves into the app.
5. After students are presented a number or letter in this app, teachers can have students find that amount of objects that relate to the number or objects that start with that letter in the classroom.

Screenshots