Learning Vowel Sounds Through Song & Dance

I am so excited to share these vowel songs from Have Fun Teaching with you!  My primary students LOVE doing these dances!  The videos are a great way to distinguish between the long and short vowel sounds.  I use the SRA reading program with some groups, so the videos are especially helpful since they include the symbols to identify long or short vowels (ă or ā). The videos also give sample words for each vowel sound and prompt students to practice writing the letters.  So much instruction within these short videos!

  

The BEST part of the videos is that they encourage students to get up and MoViNg!! That is especially important for the struggling readers who have short attention spans and need the kinesthetic aspect to help them retain the content. We add motions to correspond with each word.  We also throw our hands in the air from side to side for the long vowel sounds (think of the motions for "Hey... Oh..").  For the short vowel we do short up and down arm motions.  

Check out one of my small groups and our principal 

in action doing part of the letter A video!

Here are the vowel videos that you can use with your students:

I hope that your students enjoy these videos as much as mine! Do you have any other fun dances you do to practice vowel sounds?

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