Today I was able to participate in an
in-service for Phonics Dance, a program our first and second grade teachers use
to help students learn to associate sounds with letters, and therefore become
better readers and writers. http://phonicsdance.com/index.html
Being an SLP, and having assisted one of
my grad school site supervisors in teaching the program Sounds In Motion to one
of our kindergarten classes, I was very curious to see the difference between
the two programs. http://www.soundsinmotionprogram.com/.
Sounds in Motion was created by Frances
Santore, a speech language pathologist, and we use it at my school for
kindergarten students. It, like Phonics
Dance, uses movement to help students associate sounds with letters. Sounds in Motion teaches body movements that are
based on the following characteristics of each speech sound: pitch; duration;
tension; place of the articulators in space; and intensity. It is a 15 week program co-taught by the
speech pathologist and classroom teacher, and it helps students learn
whole-body listening, articulation, phonemic awareness, and letter/sound
association. I can say from experience
that my students love the program because they learn to make movements with
each sound (i.e. /p/ is opening and closing your hands up in a popping motion
like popcorn popping while you say the /p/ phoneme).
Phonics Dance, however, does things a
little differently. It also has an
introductory component to help students in kindergarten learn to associate
sounds with the letters of the alphabet.
It is taught by pairing motions with chants (do a quick Youtube search
for phonic dance and you will see a plethora of videos teachers have made of
their classes doing the dance/chant). Two sounds are taught each week (just like
with Sounds in Motion). We went through
all of the chants and motions using a PowerPoint that can be shown to students
on a SmartBoard (or posters are also available at the Phonics Dance site). In first grade, students also begin to “hunk
and chunk” letters that are paired together throughout the English language
that when combined make a new sound (i.e. /sh/, /ch/, /th/, /eigh/). Students learn the new sound these hunk and
chunks make through the daily motion and chant, as well as through daily
mini-worksheets where they learn to circle the hunk and chunk and underline
word endings (i.e. –at, ash) and blends (fl, gr, etc.). This process trains their brains to begin to
chunk common sounds and improve reading and writing skills using the patterns
in the words instead of trying to phonetically sound each individual letter
sound in the word. This program lasts
all year, and once the sounds and hunk and chunks are taught, you go through
the whole chant of every thing they have learned every day.
So how do we as SLPs fit in to these
classroom-based interventions? I like both programs, and I’m grateful my
district uses these programs because these are great RTI interventions that can
give those students who have one or two articulation errors an intervention to
assist in learning their sounds. Both
have research to support their programs, and both are fun, movement based programs
that lend themselves to co-teaching opportunities and collaboration with
classroom teachers. I am curious to see
how my kindergarten students will do with learning Sounds in Motion and then
switching to Phonics Dance in first and second grade as each program teaches
different motions. I will also say I was
impressed with some of the Extension Lessons included with Phonics Dance because
I can use them with my students who have goals for plurals, past tense verbs,
and possessive nouns, as the activities relate these skills with the sounds
made. I look forward to using the
motions students have learned in class as one more tool in my toolkit when my
sweeties come for therapy.
Have you used either of these programs?
No comments:
Post a Comment