Now assign each animal its beginning letter sound, and then, simultaneously, lock those sounds into memory with a corresponding body movement to suggest a cat washing its face, a snapping alligator and a tiger with outstreached arms. Students learn the sounds of the alphabet as well as advanced phonemic concepts through their eyes, ears, mouth, and body. Zoo-phonics emphasizes application. Because children have learned the Shapes, Sounds, and Signals of the alphabet, they can make the phonemic connection to the world of print. Zoo-phonics encourages the use of many genre of literature for the students to explore.
Children have a natural tendency to wiggle.
Zoo-phonics harnesses this wonderful energy and utilizes it for reading and spelling. Through the Animals and Body Signals, children now have a tool for decoding in reading and encoding in spelling. Phonemic concepts are taught in a developmental, sequential fashion, from concrete to more challenging, with much time spent in authentic reading and writing. For students with learning challenges , the inclusion of the Animal Characters and Body Movements offers an opportunity to bypass an area of deficit. They can easily grasp the concreteness of the Zoo-phonics method and begin to understand the relationships between letter shapes and sounds, alone and in combination.