What is Zoo–Phonics?
Why is it so successful?
earning to read, spell and write should be painless and stress-free.
Zoo phonics is just that! Learning to read using zoo phonics is a joyful experience.
It is also based on sound research and is highly successful.
Zoo Phonics uses an animal theme. Why? - - - because children relate readily to animals.
Children (and adults) learn by making connections between the known and the unknown. With zoo phonics,
the children begin by being introduced to the Zoo Phonics Animals (“the known”)
and connect with sounds and letters (the unknown)
Through playful activities; children quickly make the association and connections
between their zoo phonics animal friends to letters and sounds.
One aspect of this program that helps the children make these connections so quickly
is that children use all three learning modalities. They learn visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically.
The eyes, ears, mouth and large muscles provide the vehicle to access information.
Because children wiggle naturally, a Body Movement (called a Signal) is given to each letter
that relates directly to the animal. This kinesthetic aspect of the program helps lock the
letter shapes and sounds into memory.
Zoo-phonics encourages the children’s natural tendency to wiggle
and to express her/himself, channeling it all for learning!
The sequence of learning is as follows-
- The Animals help children remember the shapes and sounds of the letters.
- 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.
- Short vowels are taught before long vowels.
- Phonemic patterns are taught first, rather than random word lists.
Notice that capital letters and letter names are not taught right away.
When we read, capital letters are used only 5% of the time.
We read in sounds, not letter names! Teaching these developmental concepts
first can actually delay the reading process!
For more detailed information, click here to visit the Zoo Phonics web site.
