6 Ways to Get Students Moving in Elementary Literacy Instruction

Most elementary teachers can relate to feeling discouraged when, while teaching a small group reading lesson that is going well, they’re suddenly interrupted—either directly by a student who is not in the small group, or indirectly by having to stop and give a reminder to students that they need to work quietly. 

I used to approach this problem as a classroom management issue. I tried implementing several strategies to keep students working, but then I had the idea to embed movement integration strategies into literacy centers themselves. 

The solution was twofold: to give students the opportunity to move, alleviating the temptation to walk over to the teacher table, and to provide them with low-stakes opportunities to have agency over how they practice literacy skills.

Movement integration is not foreign to elementary education, but it’s typically applied to whole group instruction, not small group. During literacy instruction, movement most often serves as a strategy for reinforcing phoneme sounds kinesthetically, with some curricula even comprising specific movement exercises in their lessons. In math, movement integration typically targets a variety of skills, with research on the topic tending to focus on ways math teachers can infuse more movement into their lessons. 

But the benefits of movement integration reach far beyond reinforcing foundational skills. For that reason, I tried implementing movement into literacy centers to offer variety in the centers themselves in the ways I use movement in literacy instruction. I found six strategies particularly helpful.

1. Write the Room

This common language arts activity entails posting labeled pictures around the room and giving students a recording sheet with just the pictures on it. Their job is to walk around the room and label the matching picture on their sheet. 

Students have the opportunity to move freely but with a purposeful task, and given the simplicity of copying, they can typically do this exercise independently. Differentiation for older or more advanced students may entail copying sentences instead of words or having students generate their own sentences to describe the posted pictures.

2. Sight Word Scavenger Hunt

The sight word scavenger hunt is another free-movement option that allows students to move about the room and record words. Instead of posted pictures, however, this activity asks students to look for sight words. 

Depending on the grade level you teach, you may write out words and post them around the room for students to copy or challenge them to find the words on classroom objects, in books, etc., using tallies to keep track of how many they find. 

3. Sorting

Sorts are another common language arts activity, but they typically entail cutting and gluing or using a sorting mat. Instead, try placing containers around the room, spread apart from each other, such as in the corners. 

Provide students with small objects, papers, pictures—anything that can be sorted—and have them place the items in the proper containers. Doing so will require them to move around the room. Examples could be as simple as having kindergartners sort pictures based on the beginning sounds of an item or having fourth graders sort words to describe characters in a book.

4. Reader’s Theater

This idea does not necessarily lend itself to quiet, independent work, but it does promise to keep students engaged and moving. Provide students with a “reader’s theater” script, and have them read through it while acting out the story. They will inevitably have to move to act it out properly, and by doing so, they will gain additional practice collaborating and reading aloud. 

5. Phoneme Motions

This activity requires some modeling and practice before you can send students off to do it on their own. It involves students coming up with a motion for each phoneme in a word. For example, if they are practicing consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, they will come up with three motions; CVC words that end with the letter e (CVCe) will have four motions; and so on. 

Prepare a stack of cards with either words written on them or pictures. Students will do each motion as they slowly say each phoneme to strengthen their phonemic awareness. For instance, a student may practice identifying the phonemes in dog by clapping on “/d/,” raising their hand as they make the short /o/ sound, and snapping as they say “/g/.”

6. Phonemic Awareness Hops

Create cards with words or visuals for a targeted skill, such as whether a letter sound comes at the beginning or the end of the word. As students go through the cards, they can hop if the targeted sound comes at the beginning of the word or frog jump if it comes at the end. 

Upper elementary grades could differentiate this activity to include parts of speech, true or false questions about a book, etc.

While some teachers may worry that willfully planning activities that require hopping, clapping, and other potential distractions may be more harmful than the occasional small group interruption, incorporating these activities drastically reduced the amount of talking and unnecessary movement around my classroom, because students had the opportunity to move and talk in a structured, educational manner. 

These ideas are also low-stakes; they are not worksheets with right and wrong answers, so students are less likely to seek help and instead try their best without needing to interrupt a small group. These six movement integration strategies are also effective ways to revamp literacy centers, which can become boring for students if repeated too many times.