Children who form letter sounds with their bodies outperform those who learn spelling in a traditional classroom, according to new research. Children who are at risk of having reading difficulties can benefit from the learning strategy just as much as those with normal literacy development.
Literacy skills development is a crucial element of a child’s early school years. This learning is typically done while seated, which can be challenging for certain youngsters. When a youngster falls behind in reading, he or she risks falling behind throughout their academic career.
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen investigated reading education with a study involving 57 first graders from Copenhagen’s Nrrebro Park School. One group of youngsters received conventional spelling and reading training, while the other received teaching focusing on letter-sound couplings with body movement.
Both groups comprised youngsters with varying levels of reading ability. Before and after the intervention, the children were evaluated in spelling, letter-sound awareness, and word reading.
Improved Early Reading and Spelling
After only four weeks of three 25-minute interventions each week with movement phonemes — teaching that focuses on letter-sound couplings with the use of the body — the children doubled their scores in both spelling and letter recognition tests. When compared to the children in the group who got regular classroom instruction, these improvements were substantial.
“The results suggest that embodied learning activities can significantly improve early literacy and spelling performance in children,”
said Linn Damsgaard, who did the research as part of a doctoral dissertation in the University of Copenhagen’s department of nutrition, exercise, and sports.
“We expected to see the greatest improvement in children with lower reading skills. But it turned out that children with normal reading levels experienced similar improvements. It is gratifying that children at every level experienced significant improvement in their skills, regardless of their baseline,”
added Damsgaard.
Movement and Learning Connection
Despite improvements in letter recognition and spelling individual words, the researchers found no substantial change in the children’s reading skills. Damsgaard believes there could be a natural explanation.
“Our intervention at the school was relatively short, and there is a difference between recognizing an individual letter and reading an entire word. So, we think any lack of an impact on children’s overall reading abilities is likely because the children had simply not gotten there yet in their literacy development. Had we been with the children for a longer period of time, we would probably have seen an effect on literacy later on in the school year.”
The Danish National Centre for Reading’s Anne-Mette Veber Nielsen, who collaborated on the study, sees promise in the findings and believes they can serve as a foundation for further research into the relationship between movement and learning, particularly for the benefit of kids who may struggle with reading.
“The results help to substantiate how effective systematic training in linking letters and their different pronunciations is for early literacy,” says Nielsen. “I hope that future studies can help shed light on why embodied learning is the reason why children at risk of written language difficulties also experience such remarkable progress in just five hours of instruction.”
Researchers are continuing their work on different forms of embodied learning and how memory and learning processes can be improved by movement through the ACTIVE SCHOOL initiative. Through physical exercise, the goal is to develop knowledge that can help educators, school leaders, and students increase learning, well-being, motivation, and physical and mental health.
Abstract
The study aimed to investigate the effect of embodied learning on children’s literacy skills and whether the activities were particularly beneficial for children at risk for reading difficulties. We conducted a randomized controlled trial during 4 weeks for grade 1 children (n = 52, age = 7.1). Children were randomly assigned to receive regular classroom teaching (CON) or to receive teaching focusing on letter-sound couplings with the use of the body (i.e., movement-phonemes) (MOVE). Children were evaluated on letter knowledge, word reading, and spelling performance before the intervention (T1) and after the intervention (T2). A significantly improvement for MOVE compared to CON from T1 to T2 was observed in children’s ability to name letter-sounds (p < 0.001), conditional sounds (p <0.001), and for spelling performance (p = 0.002). Within CON and MOVE, children were divided into low (LP) and high performers (HP) based on word reading performance at baseline. A significantly higher improvement for LP in MOVE was observed compared to LP in CON from T1 to T2 in letter-sounds (p < 0.0001), conditional letter-sounds (p <0.0001), and for spelling performance (p = 0.037). No differences were observed between LP-MOVE and HP-MOVE. Our results demonstrate that a short intervention based on movement-phonemes increase children’s letter knowledge and spelling performance. The results also demonstrate that LP and HP have similar improvements and therefore, this type of activities are not particularly beneficial for children at risk for reading difficulties. We suggest that this teaching method could be beneficial for all school children at this age.
Reference:
- Damsgaard, L., Nielsen, AM.V., Topor, M.K. et al. Embodied Learning Activities Focusing on Letter-Sound Knowledge Increase Spelling Performance in 1st Grade Children with Low and High Reading Ability. Educ Psychol Rev 35, 74 (2023). doi: 10.1007/s10648-023-09791-9
Image credit: U. Copenhagen