Using Starfall as a Digital Learning Tool in Early Childhood Special Education

 For this blog post, I chose to explore Starfall, an open-source educational platform that offers interactive games, songs, books, and early academic activities. 

Starfall Link: https://www.starfall.com/h/

Even though Starfall is often described as a tool for K-5 classroom, it has become essential in my classroom environment, where many of my students. It has a clean layout, simple animations, and a predictable structure which gives them a safe way to explore letters, sounds, and concepts without becoming overwhelmed. One tool I like is the instant feedback. When a child taps a letter, the platform immediately provides a sound, visual cue, and animation. Abrams and Gerber 2013 explain this type of immediate response is central to game-based learning because it mirrors authentic assessment, students take action, receive feedback, adjust, and try again. For my students, even the slightest vocalization or attempt to imitate a sound is a meaningful literacy moment supported loop. 

Starfall also fits into the category of new media tools that reach traditional instruction. Hicks et al. 2012 argue that digital platforms do not replace foundational pedagogies, they raise them. In my classroom, I still model sounds, repeat letters, scaffold responses so I can guide engagement. Starfall makes the routine more accessible for learners who rely heavily on visual and auditory prompts.

How Starfall Fits into a Larger Unit of Study

Learning Objectives

• Build early phonological awareness
• Strengthen expressive communication
• Develop attention and engagement through interactive literacy
• Support comprehension through song, repetition, and vocabulary

Lesson Integration

Morning Meeting:

We explore the letter of the week using ABC section. The structure mimics what Bradley and Kendell (2015) described in their review of simulations, students engage best when the digital tool reinforces rather than replaces, teacher guided routines.

Literacy Centers

Students rotate through a Starfall Station with differentiated support.

• Nonverbal learners tap or point
• Emerging speakers attempt sound imitation
• Students needing sensory breaks explore shorter animations

Implementation and Scaffolding

Introducing Starfall with a clear routine

1. Watch
2. tap
3. try the sound
4. your turn to explore
5. This predictable flow matters for students with communication or sensory needs. 

Scaffolding

Coopilton (2022) argues that critical game literacies require educators to think intentionally about how games shape imagination and participation. In early childhood special education that means designing supports so that every child can participate. for example: 

• Hand over hand support
• Reduced sound
• Visual modeling
• shortened activities
• expanded vocabulary prompts for the higher learner

Assessment of Learning

Assessment focusses on observable literacy behaviors, not formal testing.

Indicators I look for

• Does the child track the letter visually?
• Do they vocalize, imitate, or gesture toward sounds?
• Can they point to the correct letter when prompted?
• Do they show increased independence navigating Starfall

I will keep anecdotal notes, photos or short videos (With permission) and Data sheets tied to IEP communication goals.

Starfall blends new media, game-based principles, and traditional early literacy pedagogy in ways that make learning accessible to young children with diverse needs.

References 

Abrams, S. S., & Gerber, H. R. (2013). Achieving through the feedback loop: Videogames, authentic assessment, and meaningful learning. English Journal, 103(1), 95–103.

Coopilton, M. (2022). Critical game literacies and critical speculative imagination: A theoretical and conceptual review. Game environments, 17, Article 17.

Bradley, E. G., & Kendall, B. (2015). A review of computer simulations in teacher education. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 43(1), 3–12.

Bradley, E. G., & Kendall, B. (2015). A review of computer simulations in teacher education. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 43(1), 3–12.

 

Digital Platforms have become a permanent part of K-12 learning, shaping how students communicate. how families stay informed, and how teachers deliver instruction. My own journey as a special education preschool teacher along with my combined experience supporting my children during COVID has shown me how these tools can either strengthen school-home partnerships or create new barriers. For this blog, I will discuss two platforms that influenced my work: ClassDojo and Google Classroom. Both tools have changed the literacy demands placed on students, parents, and teachers, and they highlight exactly what Wargo (2021) calls "Personal digital inquiry" where everyday tools become learning spaces. 

ClassDojo

ClassDojo is a classroom communication app used widely in early childhood and K-12 setting. It allows teachers to message families, share photos/videos of learning, post reminders, track behaviors, and build a class story. In a preschool special education classroom, it becomes more than a communication tool. The platform is a great connector between the school day and the child's home life.

 (Figure 1: a snapshot of my class dojo post for                                                                 my own class)

User Engagement: 

Teachers: Share announcements, visuals, pictures of student work, behavior updates, attendance reminders, and event notifications.

Parents: View updates in real time, send quick messages, ask questions, receive photos of their child engaged in activities. This is especially important for parents of non-verbal or minimally verbal students.

Students: Younger children do not use the app directly, but their learning is shown through photos, videos, and portfolios I create.

ClassDojo supports what Mirra et al. (2021) call participatory communication because parents become active partners rather than passive recipients. ClassDojo shifts communication to a quick good tool, it allows short messages, which replace phone calls Photos and videos replace long explanations about a child's progress. A really great feature that I use with my bilingual parents is the translation features support multilingual families, which is crucial in the Bronx. The other part is the parents access daily updates the help them understand what work I am doing and type of behavior notes and school or class announcements. I don't use this option too much but the behavior system in the app can have a negative by misuse and does not allow for trauma informed or developmentally appropriate practice. The over reliance on photos may oversimplify complex learning moments. Although there is privacy some concerns may be the photos of children stores in a third-party server. As a teachers must be careful not to post personally identifying information, sensitive behaviors, or medical/IEP details publicly on the class story. To use ClassDojo responsibly, families and teachers need understanding tone, privacy and boundaries in messages this is a form of digital communication literacy. Visual literacy is shown by interpreting photos and videos as instructional documentation. ClassDojo aligns well with early childhood goals of family partnerships. Teachers can use it to document learning and support communication between home and school.

Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a learning management system (LMS) used to school settings to post assignments, organize content, collect student work, and deliver instruction. During Covid, many families including my own relies on google classroom, google meets and zoom meetings which became what we call the virtual classroom.

(Figure 2: Google Classroom example)

User Engagement

Teachers: Assign work, organize modules, post materials, provide feedback, differentiate tasks.

Students: Submit assignments, respond to questions, access resources, join live sessions.

Parents: Monitor through guardian summaries, help children navigate assignments, and attend virtual meetings through meet and others set up through zoom.

Influence on Communication

Google classroom changed communication in several ways:

Written comments became the default feedback tool. Teachers used multimodal posts (PDF's, videos, links, images). Zoom also turned teaching into synchronous digital space, where communications were tied to screens, microphones, and virtual etiquette. This shift aligns with Doerr-stevens (2021) argument that digital spaces create embodied forms of literacy, because students were expected to communicate, move, and learn through a screen.

Information in Google Classroom comes at students in so many different ways, and I saw this clearly when my own kids were using it every day. Everything is organized in streams or topics, and each assignment can have links, videos, PDF's, or extra resources layered right underneath it. Students end up consuming information on their own, sometimes going back to reread or rewatch something when they need it, which is actually a powerful skill. But it also depends a lot on having stable internet, a device that works and an adult nearby who can help if they get stuck. Watching my children navigate all these multimodal pieces of content made me realize that this is now a permanent part of schooling. Kids are expected to move between videos, text, images, and instructions almost naturally, and that kind of digital literacy is becoming just as important as traditional reading and writing.

Impact Learning

Positive: Flexible access to assignments, built on tools for students with disabilities (text to speech, enlarges text, audio comments), Families could rewatch lessons, clear organizations of class materials.

Negative: Requires high parent involvement for young students, screen fatigue, digital divide issues (wi-fi, devices, housing instability), harder to observe social-emotional cues through zoom.

Privacy and safety were some of the biggest concerns I had when using Google Classroom and Zoom, both as a parent and as a teacher. Students were suddenly on camera inside their homes, and that opened the door to a level of exposure none of us were fully prepared for. Even though Zoom bombing is not as common now, the risk reminded us how quickly outside interruptions could happen if links weren’t protected. With Google accounts, there are also real questions about how student data is stored and who has access to it. Even something as simple as emails being visible in Classroom can make families uneasy. All of these factors pushed schools, teachers, and parents to think more carefully about how to protect children online, it is something we have to do not just academically, but in a way that honors their privacy and keeps them safe.

These platforms reveal how digital tools shape modern K-12 learning. ClassDojo strengthens family engagement and helps teachers document learning in real time. Google Classroom and Zoom transform how content is delivered and accessed. Together, they demand new literacies, not only reading and writing.

References

Doerr-Stevens, C. (2021). Embracing the messiness of research: Documentary video composing as         embodied critical media literacy.

Mirra, N., Garcia, A., & Morrell, E. (2021). Revolutionizing inquiry in urban English classrooms:                 Pursuing voice and justice through youth participatory action research.

Wargo, J. (2021). Sounding the garden, voicing a problem: Mobilizing critical literacy through personal      digital inquiry with young children.

William T. Grant Foundation. (n.d.). Networks, knowledge brokers, and the potential to impact the use         of research evidence.

 

In My final project will focus on digital storytelling with disabled children in early childhood special education settings. I'm particularly interested in how digital storytelling such as using audio, pictures, symbols, video, and other multimodal media, can help children with disabilities express themselves, create identity, and engage meaningfully in classroom literacies.

Why this issue appeals to me:

As a lead special education teacher, I frequently work with children who communicate via visuals, gestures, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices, or atypical ways of expression. Traditional print-based literacy (reading/writing) often fails to capture the full variety of how these children can express their thoughts and voices.

Digital storytelling provides an inclusive pathway: it broadens what constitutes literacy, empowers children to contribute their stories on their own terms, and connects with participatory culture by recognizing different ways of meaning-making.

From a practical sense, incorporating digital storytelling tactics into my classroom creates new chances for children to contribute, families to see their children's voices, and me to collaborate with children as creators because they are not simply receivers of literacy.

As I work toward my master's degree and teacher certification, this topic brings together theory (new literacies, multimodal learning, participatory culture) and practice (inclusive teaching, special education, early childhood). It will provide me with a solid research foundation that I can use in my classroom straight away and expand in future roles.

Annotated Bibliography

Rivera, C. J., Hudson, M. E., Weiss, S. L., & Zambone, A. (2017). Using a Multicomponent Multimedia Shared Story Intervention with an iPad to Teach Content Picture Vocabulary to Students with Developmental Disabilities. Education and Treatment of Children, 40(3), 327–352. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44684170

This study evaluated the effectiveness of multimedia shared stories delivered on iPads to teach vocabulary to students with developmental disabilities. The researchers found that interactive digital stories improved vocabulary acquisition and engagement compared with traditional instruction.

Lewis-Dagnell, K. (2024). Using “I Am” digital stories to facilitate autistic young people to present their voices. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 24(1), 45–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12618

Lewis-Dagnell discusses the use of “I Am” digital stories to help autistic children and adolescents express identity and lived experience. The project used arts-based, participatory methods where participants created their own short multimedia narratives.

Kritsotaki, E., Castro-Kemp, S., & Kamenopoulou, L. (2024). Digital storytelling: An educational approach for enhancing dyslexic children’s writing skills, critical and cultural learning. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 24(2), 110–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12722

This article presents a mixed-methods study on digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool for students with dyslexia. Researchers found significant improvements in written expression, motivation, and intercultural understanding through the use of digital story projects.

Liu, S., Reynolds, B. L., Thomas, N., & Soyoof, A. (2024). The Use of Digital Technologies to Develop Young Children’s Language and Literacy Skills: A Systematic Review. Sage Open, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440241230850(Original work published 2024)

This study reviews how digital technologies like apps, e-books, and multimedia tools help young children develop language and literacy skills. The authors found that digital tools can improve vocabulary, reading comprehension, and engagement when teachers use them with purpose and guidance.

When I think about designing classroom activities across spaces, I remind myself that learning doesn't begin and end on a screen. For the group I work with, learning is most powerful when it moves between hands on experiences, guided conversations and carefully chosen digital supports. Donohue explains that digital literacies give students new wats to represent knowledge and build meaning, but those tools are only one part of the bigger picture. In my classroom, I want to be intentional about showing children how technology fits into their broader literacy practices rather than letting it stand alone. 

Engaging children in conversation around new literacy can be simple but purposeful. For example, when I use digital story telling app, I can pause and ask, "Who might want to hear a story?". conversation can help my students see the tool not just ask a task but as a way to connect with each other in their group.

Philips and Garcia remind us that even though today's children are growing up surrounded by technology, pedagogy must remain important. In other words, simply putting an iPad in front if a child is not enough, it is the intentional teaching choices we make that determine whether technology deepens learning or just distracts from it. This resonates with my preschool classroom, where students may be drawn to digital apps but still need adult modeling, structure and scaffolding to understand how those tools connect to literacy and communication. 

Equity and engagement are always a worry as not all children have equal access to technology at home. To support this, I sometimes create activities that have multiple entry points, so if a child struggles with the digital, they can still participate in the hand on work. 

A project I would love to try is a "Community Helpers Project" We could begin with the student's role-playing different community helpers (Doctors, firefighter, policeman) using props and costumes. Then, we could take photos and videos of the children in their roles and compile them into a digital class book or a slideshow using an app calked Book Creator. I love this because it uses imaginative play with digital publishing, giving the children a product to share with families. The tension, of course is ensuring that technology supports rather than replaces play. To help this, I would keep the focus on the role play itself and use the digital tool as a way to capture and celebrate student learning.

References 

Donohue, C. (2015). Technology and digital media in the early years: Tools for teaching and learning.

Philips, L. A., & Garcia, M. (2013). The importance of still teaching the iGeneration: New technologies and the centrality of pedagogy. International Journal of Educational Research, 62, 257–265. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2013.09.002

 

     One of my main takeaways from the reading is that digital literacies are not just about technical skills, but also about meaning making, communication, and identity. We have learned that literacy is and has been a collection of communication and sociocultural practices shared amount communities and that involves communities withing schools ("Definition of literacy in a digital age," 2022). They include the way we use texts, images, and multimedia to represent themselves, give knowledge and participate in communities. In my preschool classroom, I already see how children express themselves through movement, images, or even technology-assisted play. In my area literacy is about communication in its many forms, not just reading words on a page. It can be said that I am using the concept of multiliteracies. Multiliteracies came about as a way to move beyond the old idea that literacy is just reading and writing and instead recognize all the new ways to share (Sang 2017).

    Literacy is not static; it changes as technology and society change. "The new " was the idea that literacy is always tied to social practices rather than just skills (Knobel and Lankshear's 2007). They describe how new literacies often focus on participation, collaboration, and creativity. What children bring into a classroom today often looks very different from the school-based literacy practices we use to have and value. In my reading I learned that digital literacies are not just access to tools but about using them critically and equitably (International Literacy Association 2018). This challenges me to think about how I introduce technology in my preschool special education classroom. It is not enough to put a tablet in a child's hands, I need to be intentional about how it is used, making sure it promotes expression and inclusion not just rote learning. In this article I learned that it is just not about how one often thinks that about digital literacy in terms of helping students keep up with technology, but it shifted my thinking towards how literacy can also empower students who are marginalized. This challenged me because as an educator. I sometimes worry that very young children may not be ready for "big" concepts.  

    In my preschool classroom I see how important it is to expand what counts as literacy. Some of my students may not communicate through traditional reading or writing, but they can tell a story with pictures, movements, or digital recordings. Expanding the definition of literacy allows me to meet them where r they are and give them the tools to grow into confident communication in a digital world.

                                                                        

                                                        References

Definition of literacy in a digital age. (2022, April 19). National Council of Teachers of English. https://ncte.org/statement/nctes-definition-literacy-digital-age/

(n.d.). ERIC - Education Resources Information Center. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1139059.pdf

(n.d.). International Literacy Association. https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-improving-digital-practices-literacy-learning-justice.pdf

(n.d.). Narrate Annotate – Storytelling and Learning in the Open. https://narrateannotate.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/lk2007ch1.pdf

 In my work as a preschool special education teacher, I see every day how literacy is much more than reading and writing traditional print. Many of my students are emergent communicators, and their "literacy" might come through picture symbols, gestures, assistive technology, or digital storytelling rather than only printed words. 

In my reading I learned that the “technical stuff” in New Literacies is “new” because of two distinctive characters. First, while the “old technologies” mostly consist of simple forms of production, the new “technical stuff” is a “hybridization of multimodal media” that includes texts, images, music, videos, etc., which altogether create interactive and interconnected forms of production that can be retrieved conveniently (Lankshear and Knobel, 2007). 

Recognizing these as valid literacies allows me to value and build upon each child's strengths, rather than limiting them to one traditional pathway.

Look, if we're going to treat "literacy" like it's just reading and writing in perfect academic English, in one cookie-cutter dialect, we're totally missing the point. Tons of kids, especially those from different cultures, or who use language in unique ways get left out when we're that rigid.  A preschooler who is bilingual or uses augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) may have strong skills in meaning making and self-expression, but these could be overlooked if we only value standard print English.

New literacies practices broaden this definition to include digital media, multimodal expression (images. audio, video, symbols), and community-based forms of communication.  This can support equity and access by recognizing the literacy practices students already use in their daily lives and connecting them to learning in school. In my own classroom, we use tools like ClassDojo to share photos and videos of students' work with families and integrate music and movement into storytelling.

At the end of the day, I believe literacy is about connection, helping students find their voice and giving them the tools to share their ideas in ways that are meaningful them. In my preschool special education classroom, that might mean a student tells a story through a sequence of pictures, sings it, or uses an iPad to record their voice. When we look at literacy through a bigger picture, we open more doors for students to be heard and capable. That's the kind of classroom I want to build every day.

References

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). A new literacies sampler. Peter Lang
 

 Hello and welcome!!

My name is Flora Rivas, and I am so excited to share this space with you throughout our course. This blog will be my place to share ideas, reflect and just talk about the learning and teaching journey as I work towards a master's in education while continuing my role as a lead teacher in a preschool special education setting.   

A little bit about me: I am always in need of rest! I work two jobs because I have three children.  I pray and ask for the grace to keep my strength up as I complete my goals. I love watching my shows and reading.   I look forward to this learning ride as we all push through to complete our goals!!!