Children learning to read? Give them a hand!

Have you ever seen your child using their fingers to sound out a word when reading? It might look funny, but using this kind of movement is actually a great method to strengthen reading skills!

First things first- why are children asked to count sounds in a word at all? Can't they just sound it out? Children are asked to count sounds in words for several reasons. Most importantly, it helps children learn to isolate phonemes, the smallest units of sound in words. Learning to isolate, identify, and manipulate phonemes is an important step in being able to decode (sound out words), and encode (spell words). Additionally, counting the sounds in a word reinforces the concept that some sounds are spelled with multiple letters. For example, the word "edge" is spelled with 4 letters, but only has 2 sounds: /e/-/j/.

Many schools teach the "tapping" method, a strategy in which a child taps each finger to their thumb for every sound in a word. For /c/-/a/-/t/, the index finger would be the last to touch the thumb.

I have also encountered students who use the method of patting down their arms, starting with the first pat on the shoulder for the first sound, then moving down towards the wrist. While I like this method for counting syllables, it is hard for children to keep track of how many sounds they are hearing in more complex words without the visual cue of fingers to count.

My favorite is the "finger-stretch" method. With this method, a child makes a fist, then extends a digit for each sound, beginning with the thumb. By using this method, the child can see how many sounds are in a word, because they have that many fingers in the air! It also helps me as a teacher, because I can then point to different extended digits to reference individual sounds and their placement in the word.

Tapping, patting, and finger-stretching offer another great benefit when learning to read and spell. Engaging the sense of touch when learning is a great way to make a lesson multisensory. When children engage multiple senses as they learn, what we teach them is more likely to stick!