Here at The Learning Tree we teach through a program call Zoo-Phonics. The Zoo-Phonics Multisensory Language Arts Program is kinesthetic, multi-modal approach to learning all aspects of language arts, including vocabulary development and articulation, based on phonics and phonemic awareness. The principle of Zoo-phonics maximizes understanding, memory, utilization and transference to all areas of the reading, spelling and writing process in a playful and concrete manner.
Zoo-phonics is a method developed to make children strong readers and spellers using the whole brain approach:
“phono” (hearing)
“oral” (speaking)
“visual” (seeing)
“kinesthetic” (moving)
“tactile” (touching)
Students actually learn the sounds of the alphabet and advanced phonemic concepts through an easily understood, concrete method of presentation.
The Animal Alphabet helps children remember the shapes and sounds of the letters. Here is a little background information about how children learn through Zoo-Phonics.
- Letter sounds are taught before letter names.
- Lowercase letters are taught before capital letters.
- The Body Movement for each Animal Letter helps “cement” the phonemic information into memory.
- The alphabet is taught sequentially, and as a whole entity, “a – z.” The alphabet is not fragmented.
- Short vowels are taught before long vowels.
- Phonemic patterns (at, bat, fat, sat, etc.) are taught first, rather than random word lists (of, it, then, was, etc.)
- The Zoo-phonics® curriculum is fully integrated with other subjects.
Our teachers get very creative when incorporating Zoo-Phonics into their lesson plans and we love seeing all the new ways children are learning the alphabet. Be sure to follow along on our Social Media pages to see all the ways we utilize Zoo-Phonics daily.