EAROBICS
An activity I found on this site was via the GAME GOO educational game page. It was called "Alien Scavenger Hunt Letter Bugs". This was deemed to be at an "intermediate" level, which I agree. The goal was to identify ("catch") the individual sounds/letters (letter-sound correspondences) that make up various small words. This activity would be useful for students who have phonemic awareness difficulties, but not as an introductory activity. Students would need some awareness of letter-sound recognition before starting this activity. A few problems with this activity is the way in which you "catch" the sounds/letters. Students with fine motor difficulties would find this difficult as it requires you to move the mouse to catch the letter. The letters are moving at a reasonable pace so it may be difficult for some students. Another problem was hearing the original word in which you had to identify the specific letters/sounds. At times, it was difficult to hear the word, especially the initial sound. Students with auditory difficulties may find this activity troublesome. I would have liked to see the voice repeat the sounds of each letter when the mouse was over it. This would have been a nice feature as it would remind students as to what sound that letter made. Perhaps this is what would occur at a "beginner" level activity and not an "intermediate" level. Overall, this is a useful activity to reinforce letter-sound recognition for students who are working on developing their phonemic awareness -- not to be used as an introductory activity.
STARFALL
On this website, the activity I chose was to read the book "Pumpkin Patch" on the Starfall website. As you read the story, you created a jack-o-latern! I thought this was a great activity as it incorporated different levels of reading. You could read the story without any support, or you could click on the individual words and have them read to you. Before it read the entire word to you, it broke the word down into its individual phonemes. This activity would benefit students with phonological and phonemic awareness difficulties. You could use this activity to help students decode individual words and/or develop their awareness of individual phonemes. I think this activity would better suit a wider range of abilities within the classroom than the previous activity on the Earobics website. You did not need to track objects to complete this activity, but their was some mouse-work involved with would still require fine motor skills. Overall, this is a great, and interactive, activity to help develop phonological and phonemic awareness.
