Jumping Sounds!

Hi y'all! I want to tell y'all about something I use in my class that has dramatically helped both my struggling readers and my kinesthetic learners....it's called "jumping sounds!" I teach phoneme segmentation using these handy cards and color-codes [check them out here] Green for the initial sound, yellow for the medial sound(s) and red for the final sound.

 I have a lot of kinesthetic learners in my class, so I bought these mats at the Dollar Tree for $1. I put these mats down on the floor and let my little scholars jump on each color as they said the sounds in the word.

This idea kind of morphed when working with my struggling readers one day during small group reading (our small group includes phonics and guided reading components). Many of my students have no problem reading the letter sounds individually within a word, the difficulty lies in blending them together. I used the same green, yellow, and red mats but added the letter sounds to them! I write the sounds of the 3 phoneme word on the chopping mats with dry erase markers. My little scholars literally jump on the letter sounds as they stretch them out to read the word.

We do this several times and then go back to the table to read that word in the text. This kinesthetic approach has really helped my struggling readers and they certainly remember how to blend the letter sounds when they encounter that word in the text. I'll often leave the mats down all day and I'll find a line of my little scholars waiting their turn to "jump the sounds!" 

You can modify this idea to use in your classroom in a variety of ways. You can just use the colored mats (with no letters written on them) to teach phoneme segmentation, you can "jump syllables," you can blend 4 of 5 phoneme words -- just add a few more yellow mats!

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