Material Detail

This link is to the Starfall set of online curriculum programs. This is an animated demonstration of how a word, such as "jam" is broken down into its 3 component sounds while a cartoon of grape jelly goes through the "word analysis machine". The Starfall materials have been adopted in many primary and preschool classrooms. They are free or low cost and have been largely subsidized by the artist Susan Polis-Schutz and her husband Stephen. Since the materials are evidently popular (I have personally seen them in use in many classrooms in Florida) I can say that both children and teachers find them enjoyable and easy to use. But I want to caution users not to rely exclusively on automated programs for meaningful early reading experiences. The programs are not able to represent diverse dialects of English or different vocabulary norms, and they never connect to situational relevance--when might a person need to say the individual sounds of a word?? The assumption is that lots of experience "sounding out" words will assist early readers with decoding printed text. Any child that enjoys spending time doing this phonics activity should certainly be encouraged to spend that time; however, I would not recommend any kind of required participation in these automated phonics activities for the reasons mentioned above.