Adding Movement to Phonics Instruction

At Gilles-Sweet Elementary in Fairview Park, Ohio, kindergarten teacher Keri Laughlin combines movement and phonics to help her students build the foundational literacy skills they’ll need as readers. Phonics can be challenging for young learners, but by turning the lesson into a multisensory experience, Laughlin gives students multiple ways to connect letters and sounds—so that learning sticks in both their minds and their bodies.

Laughlin uses three different strategies to teach phonemes, each one offering students a way to physically connect letter sounds to movement. In the first one, students tap out sounds with their fingers for consonant-vowel-consonant words before blending the sounds together. In the next strategy, they use their arms to represent each part of a word, touching the beginning, middle, and end—an approach that provides a bigger, more tactile experience and helps isolate tricky sounds. Finally, she introduces Phonics in Motion, an evidence-based program that pairs each sound with a specific gesture, engaging students’ senses of hearing, sight, and physical sensation all at once.

As students participate, they’re not just practicing phonics—they’re immersed in it. While kids are eagerly tapping, stretching, and acting out letter sounds, they’re experimenting with different strategies to find the ones that work best for them. Laughlin emphasizes that what works for one student might not work for another, and with students at different reading levels, adding movement gives everyone a way in. “They're able to choose which strategy works best for them, because what may work for me may not work for my neighbor,” she explains. “The end goal is to be able to decode that word and to be able to sound out and blend.”

Research shows that connecting movement to letter sounds can be highly effective. Laughlin has been using these techniques for more than five years and has seen remarkable growth in her students’ reading abilities. By giving children multiple entry points into literacy, Laughlin turns phonics into an active, joyful part of the day—helping students build fluency in a way that feels both natural and fun.

To find more ways to incorporate movement into phonics and reading instruction, read Linnea Lyding’s article for Edutopia, “Squats, Lunges, and Phonemes.”