This is the idea behind multisensory literacy instruction: by engaging multiple brain pathways simultaneously, children can learn more effectively. In multisensory literacy instruction, movement is not just a fun add-on. Kinesthetic and tactile practice — learning through movement, touch, and physical action — is one of the key ways children reinforce what they are learning. This is why movement-based techniques often appear in highly respected structured literacy approaches, including Orton-Gillingham-informed instruction.

In practice, this might look like children:

• tracing letters
• tapping sounds
• saying sounds aloud
• using hand motions
• building words with tiles
• pairing a movement with a literacy concept

When movement is built into multisensory literacy practice, it becomes more than a way to “get the wiggles out.” It enables children to actively participate in literacy learning — not just by seeing and hearing symbols and sounds, but by touching, moving, and physically experiencing them.

Learn More

• Understood.org — What Is Multisensory Instruction?: Describes how multisensory instruction uses sight, sound, touch, and movement to give children more than one way to connect with what they are learning.
• Reading Rockets — Phonics Instruction: The Value of a Multi-sensory Approach: Explains how multisensory phonics instruction — which can combine listening, speaking, reading, writing, touch, and movement — can help children build reading skills.
• Edutopia — Adding Movement to Phonics Instruction: Shows how movement can be built into phonics instruction, including gestures, tapping sounds, and body movements that help children connect letters and sounds.

Research on embodied cognition – the idea that thinking and learning are shaped by physical experience – suggests that movement can help make the abstract sound-symbol connection feel more concrete. When children pair a sound, letter, or word part with a physical action, they are not only hearing or seeing the concept — they are experiencing it with their bodies.

In practice, this might look like children using gestures for sounds, stepping or tapping out phonemes, moving their arms to show the beginning/middle/end sounds in a word, or using whole-body movements to represent letter-sound patterns.

Movement can support:

• letter-sound knowledge
• phonemic awareness
• sound-symbol mapping
• memory for sounds and letters
• active participation in decoding practice

Paired with clear, systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, and language, movement can be a powerful way to help children experience and remember the sound-symbol relationships that early reading depends on. Movement does not need to be complicated to be meaningful. A gesture, action, rhythm, or repeated movement can transform abstract concepts – like letters! – into learning experiences that stick.

Learn More

• Damsgaard et al. — Effects of 8 Weeks with Embodied Learning on 5–6-Year-Old Children’s Pre-reading Skills: Reports on a study showing that pairing letter-sound learning with movement supported children’s letter-sound knowledge.
• University of Copenhagen — Children’s Spelling Skills Improve When Teaching Integrates Movement: Summarizes research showing how movement-phoneme activities can support early literacy skills like letter-sound knowledge and spelling.
• Edutopia — 5 Ways to Teach Embodied Phonics: Offers practical examples of how gestures, movement, and physical actions can be paired with phonics instruction to help children connect sounds and symbols.

Children need repeated practice with sounds, letters, blending, decoding, fluency, and language patterns. But for many young learners — especially children who struggle with reading — that practice can feel frustrating, tiring, or discouraging.

Movement can help change the experience of literacy practice. When movement is built into the activity, children have more ways to participate and feel successful. Instead of the task feeling like “sit still and get it right,” the invitation becomes: move, try, participate, and engage.

In practice, this might look like children tapping out sounds, jumping for each phoneme, acting out vocabulary, gesturing while saying sounds, or moving their bodies to show parts of a word.

Movement can help literacy activities feel:

• playful instead of repetitive
• interactive instead of passive
• motivating instead of stressful
• active instead of still
• approachable instead of discouraging

For children who resist reading practice, movement can help change the emotional experience of literacy learning. It can broaden what success looks like during practice and give children a more active, confident way into skills that may otherwise feel difficult or frustrating.

Learn More:

• Johnson — Outcomes of Incorporating a Literacy Intervention in a Pre-Kindergarten Physical Education Class: Explores how embedding literacy activities into movement-based physical education supported pre-K students’ early literacy skills, enjoyment, and understanding.
• Mavilidi et al. — Thinking While Moving in English: Reports on a classroom study where physical activity was integrated into English lessons and was associated with improvements in students’ on-task behavior and spelling.
• Edutopia — Squats, Lunges, and Phonemes: Shows how movement can make phonemic awareness practice more active and engaging, especially for students who struggle to stay focused during reading lessons.