Students: S-H-Ship. Shhhhhh.

C-H-Chin. Chhhhhh..

Keri Laughlin: Because we combine movement and literacy, our students are able to build foundational skills for future learning. Connecting movement and letters is helpful because if you’re doing a familiar motion, you are going to create that muscle memory. Once they have that, the fluency will come.

Everyone, put your hands up, wiggle around, get all your wiggles out, put your hands back down.

So we use a mix of three strategies and they hit so many different learners.

The first strategy that we teach is using our fingers.

Can you show me what you would do with your fingers?

Student: You tap them when you, when there’s a sound.

Keri Laughlin: You would do a CVC word. So a consonant, vowel, consonant. You touch beginning, middle, and end, and then you blend it together.

The next strategy that we have is using our arm. So it’s a bigger strategy. It’s more tactile. So beginning, middle, end, blend it together.

Student: You do this!

Keri Laughlin: I swipe down. Why would I do that?

Student: To like blend it all together.

Keri Laughlin: To blend it all together.

If a student were to struggle, then you can stop or you can say, “Hey, if this is your beginning, middle, or end and you just want the middle sound, tell me what you hear at your elbow.”

Rrrrrr… aaake. Our last one that we do is our phonics in motion.

What word did you just say?

Student: Cat?

Keri Laughlin: Good work.

Every motion is a feeling. So when you say zzz for Z, like you feel that throughout your body so that the students then feel it and remember it. “Oh, Z makes me feel like this. This is the sound zzzzzz.” And they’re hearing it. They’re feeling it. You’re making that motion.

I am gonna write a word up on our whiteboard and I want you to use one of the three strategies that we just talked about, fingers, arm, phonics in motion.

They’re able to choose which strategy works best for them because what may work for me may not work for my neighbor.

Student: Duh-ih-guh. Dig.

Keri Laughlin: The end goal is to be able to decode that word and be able to sound out and blend.

Student: Duh- ih- guh.

Keri Laughlin: When I look at the movement piece, that works for all learners in the classroom, no matter what level they’re at, because of that muscle memory.

Reading is hard. There are many steps that the student has to understand before they even actually get to the reading process itself. So when they’re doing those movements with that strategy, it just comes natural to them.

Student: Sss-puh-ih-nnn.

Keri Laughlin: Great job, Arlo.

We have done this for probably five or six years now, and the growth that I have seen personally with students is just amazing.

Ih, nnn. Again: Sss, puh, inn, what’s my word?

Students: Spin.

Keri Laughlin: Great job.

Gilles-Sweet Elementary

.css-1sk4066:hover{background:#d1ecfa;}Adding Movement to Phonics Instruction

Adding Movement to Phonics Instruction