No child slips between the cracks with Zoo-phonics®…"Just wanted to write to let you know I am eating crow in North Carolina. I was just not sure about the program and was concerned about having to implement Zoo-phonics®. On Wednesday, I started talking about the animals and introducing the signals and sounds. The children loved them and I thought to myself skeptically, "Of course they love them, they are animals!" On Thursday, I went over the signals again, and was completely amazed that they knew them all. Even my students that only had learned about 2 sounds out of the 18 we had already learned were producing the correct sound and using the signals. On Friday, I decided to give a little spelling test. I was just going to use the ad family. Boy, was I shocked and surprised when ALL of the students made a 100%! Even my little boys that are struggling! They were signaling with me and then they would look up at the Nature Cards and make the connection between the animal and the signal and the sound! Wow! I tried again on Monday and used a variety of CVC words. I did not stick to a word family because surely it had been a fluke. NOPE! Everyone made a 100%. Okay, I thought. It works! So now I am the biggest supporter. Sign me up! Let me sing your praises. My students are writing better. They are sounding out words to create beautiful sentences and stories. When they come to a word they don't know in a book, they signal it out and figure it out on their own! They love the program and BEG to do it. I am now a Zoophonics Teacher!!
