Introduction -page2

After establishing a context for learning, each skill and concept is isolated, examined, and practiced.  Animated-Literacy provides direct, sequential skills instruction in a sequence that is based on the stages of language development that children and adults pass through when they are learning a first or second language.  When used to teach reading and writing, this universal sequence makes learning easier, faster, and more enjoyable for both fluent English speakers and students who have limited English skills and vocabularies. Before birth, babies start to detect the patterns, rhythm, and melody of songs, poems, rhyming books, and their mother's voice.  Shortly after birth, babies respond to and imitate the silly faces and gestures made by adults while continuing to respond to the rhythm, melody, and sounds of language. Gestures help children comprehend, imitate, and interact with the people around them.  Because sign language activates the same areas of the brain as spoken language, gestures "wire" the brain for later spoken and written language comprehension and production.  When parents speak, read, and sing to young children they often use gestures along with a special "sing-songy" language called "motherese."  Motherese helps children recognize the sounds and patterns of language by slowing down the rate of speech and by adding rhythm, melody, and emotion to sounds, words, and phrases.  After hearing and responding to language with squeals and gestures, children start to produce the sounds of language.  At two to four months of age, children all around the world produce similar vowel sounds (ooh, eeh, and ah).  By eight months of age, babies start to babble by blending consonant sounds with vowels to form syllables (goo, goo, gah gah).  Babies who do not gesture, coo, and babble with many sounds are often found to have delays in their oral and later written language development.

We all remember things best when they are experienced through our muscles and emotions.  (How many of us can learn to ride a bike, put it away for several years, and still ride it on our first attempt?)  In Animated-Literacy the sounds of language are taught in association with gestures that are introduced through stories, songs,  related literature, and alphabet characters that children enjoy singing and hearing over and over again.  By learning to perform a specific gesture for each sound, students activate their "muscle memory" systems.  Here students pretend to paint with Polly Panda while producing the sound of "P," point up to an umpire named Uncle Upton for the sound of short "U," juggle with Jenny Jaguar for the sound of "J," and turn a steering wheel and whirl around in circles with Irving Turtle for the sound of "UR."  The Animated-AlphabetTM Story, Song, And Action Book provides an alphabet character, a gesture, and explicit, systematic instruction for 19 consonants (b, c, d, etc.), 5 consonant digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh, & ng), and for 17 vowel sounds (5 short vowels, 5 long vowels, 3 "r" controlled vowels, the 2 sounds of "oo" as in "tooth" and "book," the sound of "ou" as in "house," and the sound of "oy" as in "boy").  When first learning to manipulate and blend sounds to develop phonological awareness, students revisit the cooing and babbling stages of language development.  Here students isolate, produce, gesture, manipulate, and blend sounds to form syllables and words.  Songs and activities are provided to develop phonological awareness in an active, playful setting.

Back Next