Fourteenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

I teach at a Title 1, inner-city elementary school, in Washington, D.C. Students in my class room were not accurately decoding three letter, consonant vowel consonant, words. The phonics curriculum that our school utilizes, Fundations, teaches fine-motor “tapping” skills. I formed the thesis - If students are able to practice their CVC decoding skills with gross-motor movement, as opposed to fine-motor “tapping,” will decoding fluency skills, and accuracy of correct letter sounds, improve? I took Fundations large sound cards (letter, keyword, sound) and stapled them to the wall. Then, I tested students one at a time by providing them with a CVC word, and had students punch/tap/slap the letters of the word, while saying the sounds. I had them restate the word, and then spell it. This was done with seven words a day, every day, for a month. After 1 month of the intervention, students improved their whole words read by at least 5 words (half a years growth according to mCLASS assessment). The gross-motor intervention was successful in helping students correctly identify letters, and decode words.