IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We have a time each day for Reader’s Workshop. During this time, I read a story and present a mini lesson that has to with with a concept or technique associated with reading. It may be on making predictions, decoding (sounding out words), or a variety of other reading skills. One of our big focuses this week is looking at letters when we are reading to see what the author is trying to say.  One of the skills I teach the kids is Tucker Signing. While this is not the only way that we present phonics at the lab school, it is one great tool to help develop letter-sound association in both reading and writing. The concept of Tucker Signing is that each letter has a sound and movement to go with it. By teaching letters in this way, chldren are given three ways to remember the letter- visual (by looking at it), auditory (by hearing and creating the sound), and kinesthetically (by making a movement  that is associated with the letter and sound). Tucker Signing is not only useful for individual letters, but also for digraphs (a pair of letters that creates one sound) which is something many of our more advanced readers are working on.  Ask your child If they can show you the “sign” and sound for some of their letters. You may be suprised at what you learn!

The following is a link to the Tucker Signs website should you want to find out a little more information about this strategy.

http://www.tuckersigns.com/parents.html

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