Community reviews for Starfall ABCs

Based on my experience, the website did very little to teach my students. When presented with a topic that I haven't taught, my students failed to grasp the new concept through the website's use of visual and musical stimulation. However, it supported what they learned in Fundations. For instance, the site targeted letter sounds by repeating them over which helped my ELLs and those who had a hard time connecting the letter-symbol and the sound. I think that it would be helpful if the site promoted more active learning vs. passive learning. It would also be wonderful if the site would adjust its level of difficulty based on the interaction the child has with the site. For several of the activities, there's no wrong answer. That makes me question how students will be able to determine how to appropriately apply the skill independently.

I would not recommend this app for use in districts or schools where money is a factor. This app is very pricey for the features you get. It is a very well done app, but is very expensive compared to other apps that do basically the same things with letter recognition and and letter sound association. I would pilot the app on an individual teacher iPad first before spending the money to roll the app to a classroom set or school set of iPads.

The website can be juvenile, but it's excellent for my special needs students.

I absolutely love using Starfall ABC! The graphics are interesting but not overwhelming. It is perfect for reading readiness lessons and activities.

I do not encourage of the Starfall app because of the cost and limit of material. The site is offered online free and has many more resources available. I absolutely love the site that is offered online.

I thought that this would be a great and mobile extension of the Starfall website; however, I was mistaken. Despite paying for the app, the content that is available on the website is much more engaging to students. With the website, I can also see what they are working on and specifiy different phonics and skills that are unavailable on the mobile app. I would much rather utilize the starfall website instead of purchasing the mobile app.

While this may not be a revolutionary teaching tool and you can achieve the same results with many other tools, this product brings fun to the learning which encourages student engagement and desire to continue to learn through practice and repetition.

Overall, the app is a great teaching tool for the introduction of ABC's. I liked its simplicity, but I am not sure the cost of $2.99 is a fair price for an app that only introduces students to their ABC's. I feel it serves students at a basic level, but a teacher would need another app to help a student learn how to read. Of course, a student must learn their ABC's to continue on the way with their journey to learn how to read.

This is a great product because it is so engaging. The animations and the clear pronunciation of the letter sounds mixed with the variety of presentation of letters and sounds keeps children coming back to the practice of letters and sounds with enthusiasm. This app does the triple duty of teaching letters, the sounds they spell and the teaching the vital vocabulary this population needs to acquire English. I have seen this app improve reading and speaking with my ELL students across the school year.

I recommend this App to parents of PreK, K, and ELL students since mastery of alphabetic principles is required. This APP covers letter recognition of lower-case, upper-case and sound identification. The colorful pictures appeal to the students and the voice sounds strengthen phonemic awareness.