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Emerging	Perspectives	
ep.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca	

 

 
Pivoting from In-class to Online Early Literacy Instruction and Contributing 

Critical Insights 
 

Michelle Mathezer1, Miriam Ramzy 2 
 

1University of Calgary 
 

2Foothills School Division 
 
The shutdown of in-person learning in March 2020 threatened to end an Alberta 
Education Research Partner Project focused on implementing a supplemental early 
literacy program in kindergarten classrooms. As graduate students developing the 
project, we faced a critical decision to either cancel the project or shift it to an 
online medium. The decision was not easy as the project emphasized utilizing 
embodied cognition and engagements with language. In addition, central to the 
project was the use of hands-on-materials, and physical exploration in real-world 
contexts to promote literacy learning, making the online environment an extra 
challenge. As we pivoted our project online three major challenges emerged: 
engaging young students through a computer screen, overcoming an online 
interface that limits simultaneous interactions, and incorporating hands-on 
activities within a traditional 2D non-touchable platform. In this article, we 
consider each of these challenges and our design response. We discuss how moving 
our program online allowed enhanced professional learning for classroom 
teachers and created a powerful platform to help parents support literacy skills.  
 
Keywords: online literacy, online learning, pandemic learning.  
 
Mathezer, M., Ramzy, M. (2021). Pivoting from in-class to online early literacy 
instruction and contributing critical insights. Emerging Perspectives, 5(2), 35-42. 

 
 

In February 2020, as graduate researchers working on an Alberta Education Research 
Partner Project grant, we were preparing to implement a supplemental sensorimotor and oral 
language program to enhance early literacy skills in kindergarten classrooms across two school 
boards. This design-based research (McKenney & Reeves, 2012) hinged on connecting graduate 
researchers and teachers to model and co-construct literacy programming for kindergarten students 
and then implement new pedagogy into kindergarten classrooms. The shutdown of in-person 
learning in March 2020 threatened to end this project and resulted in the loss of extra support for 
the kindergarteners who would no longer receive the planned supplemental play-based literacy 
supports. Critical problem solving was required to evaluate alternative courses of action to 

 
1 michelle.bencemathez@gmail.com 



Mathezer – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 36 

preserve the project and, more importantly, support kindergarten students who would benefit from 
increased engagement with literacy learning.  

We pivoted our project to engage students’ literacy learning through an online model. This 
was challenging given the project’s emphasis on embodied cognition and oral language 
development, utilizing engagements with language, materials and physical exploration in real-
world contexts to promote literacy learning (Ionescu & Vasc, 2014). Our quest to design an online 
early literacy program led us to connect findings from current literature on embodied programming 
and oral language approaches to observed challenges in working with young students online. Three 
challenges emerged in the literature: the management and engagement of young students through 
a computer screen, overcoming an online interface that limits simultaneous interactions, and 
increasing learning transfer through hands-on activities within a traditional 2D non-touchable 
platform. In this article, we consider each of these challenges and our design response. Finally, we 
end by considering how moving our supplemental program online allowed us to create a new 
model for professional learning with kindergarten teachers and a powerful platform to help parents 
support literacy skills.  

Management & Engagement of Young Students Online 

Managing Teaching Demands 

Even with adult-guided support, managing a group of kindergarten students online requires 
different considerations than a classroom setting. Norberg (2012) found that teaching students 
online results in an exponential increase in teaching demands, splitting a teacher’s attention 
between the content, and multiple speakers and screens. By limiting the student-to-teacher ratio to 
one teacher to four students in our program design, we enhanced the student learning experience 
in several ways. First, teachers performed consistent visual checks on students, helping to confirm 
that the students could hear, see, and share as required. In addition, smaller group sizes encouraged 
increased student participation, making students more accountable for participating and sharing 
their work with the group. Finally, the small group numbers afforded more time for the teacher to 
interact with students and prompt them to expand and elaborate on their ideas.  

Creating Online Engagement  

Video conferencing with students often does not provide the level of student engagement 
needed to sustain student attention, enthusiasm, or high levels of learning (Plowman et al., 2012). 
Hence, we designed activities that enhanced the engagement of our young students and helped to 
build a trusting community of learners.  

Building A Community of Trust. It was critical to build a community among the learners 
to foster a sense of trust between the teacher and students (Zhao et al., 2005). Online lessons began 
with a Sharing Circle Structure (see Appendix A for details) where each child had time to hold the 
floor and discuss their ideas without interruption. This structure established a safe group culture 
where every idea was honoured, and students felt valued.  

Teacher Direction. Research suggests that the quality of online learning depends on the 
quality of interactions that take place during teaching-learning processes, including both 
instructor-student interactions and student-peer interactions (Chiu et al., 2010).  For this reason, 
we embedded several practices to foster student engagement. First, research indicates that an 
online medium’s similarity to in-person communication is a significant factor in student oral 
participation and enhanced learning (Blau et al., 2017). The use of Zoom with its flexible screen 



Mathezer – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 37 

configurations allowed the adult helpers to maximize the screen to see multiple speakers at once, 
increasing the naturalness of the encounter and encouraging more interaction between multiple 
speakers. This, coupled with the small number of participants, allowed the children to see all the 
speakers on the screen, helping them to focus on and respond to important non-verbal social 
communication cues.  

Teaching techniques such as wait time, prompting, and cold calling, where teachers 
intentionally prompted individual students to share their thinking at critical points in the lesson, 
encouraged student participation in online discussions. Judicious use of extended wait time after 
posing questions encouraged extra think-time and resulted in more frequent contributions from 
traditionally reticent students. Teachers also provided thinking time to organize ideas by prompting 
students before asking questions. For example, teachers said something similar to, “Billy, I will 
ask you to describe the house you created after John talks.” Cold calling has been shown to increase 
participation and build accountability over time in synchronous online discussions (Dallimore et 
al., 2012).  

Oral Language Through Simultaneous Interactions  

A critical challenge moving our program online was maintaining a strong focus on oral 
language development. Modelling explicit facial expressions, lip movement, and pronunciations 
is crucial to early oral language acquisition (Price, 2012). Using a Zoom platform provided 
synchronous speaker views during lessons, allowing students to see the teacher’s mouth 
movements and pair them with auditory phoneme cues. When minor issues occurred with the 
synchronization of the audio and visual cues, teachers encouraged students to independently 
produce the sounds while they waited for the video to synchronize and then repeated the prompt. 
The teachers also overemphasized their speech patterns and facial expressions during the lessons 
to help students attend to the pronunciation movements.  

Also critical to the oral language lessons was increasing the number of opportunities for 
children to repeatedly practise pronouncing speech sounds and pairing auditory phoneme cues with 
visuals of letters.  Teachers first explicitly introduced a letter, emphasizing the sounds with the 
entire group of students, then together, students practiced pronouncing the letter sounds and 
applied target sounds to different words, responding in a choral manner. To close, students were 
encouraged to independently brainstorm words with the target letter, sharing their ideas with the 
online group.  

Finally, our online project design considered ways to enhance students’ oral participation 
in extended discussions. Teachers built discussion topics around shared online experiences. 
Whether it was a shared read-aloud or creative building activity, common experiences created a 
shared context, which became the foundation for the meaning of the talk that followed (Hirsch, 
2003).  Teachers also supported students in sharing and elaborating their own, and others’ ideas 
by modelling elaboration and explanation in their speech, posing questions that required students 
to expand or qualify their thinking (Nystrand et al., 2003).  

Creating Opportunities for Hands-On Manipulatives 

One of the most critical goals of our project was to provide students hands-on learning 
experiences. These experiences offered crucial opportunities to encode literacy learning through 
sensorimotor pathways (Wellsby & Pexman, 2014). Children who are offered learning 
opportunities through various playful engagements with language, materials, and physical 
exploration in real-world contexts, readily close the literacy gap (Glenberg et al., 2013). Simply 



Mathezer – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 38 

moving objects around on a 2D computer screen would limit pre-operational children’s knowledge 
transfer (Moser et al., 2015). Hence, our online lesson design drew on three aspects of embodied 
cognition: engaging significant physical movement, utilizing activities to develop the small 
muscles in children’s hands (fine motor movements), and structuring fine-motor activities that 
drew on real-world application of early literacy skills.  

Screen use is often considered a passive activity. All our lessons included at least one 
activity that engaged large physical movements, including standing up and large movements. For 
example, during lessons, students were asked to stand and act out physical movements associated 
with the letters and their accompanying phoneme (e.g., becoming tap dancers tapping their feet 
while enunciating the /t/ sound).  

To build fine motor skills with real-world activities, pre-packaged kits corresponding to 
the lessons were sent to each child. The kits contained small manipulatives that could be sorted, 
constructed, or sequenced, building skills that underlie early literacy (Suggate et al., 2016). These 
kits often encouraged creativity and play linked to real-world constructions, such as using Lego to 
build animal enclosures at a zoo and letter stamps, markers, and stickers to create signage for zoo 
enclosures. Children were then asked to describe and explain their design choices, connecting their 
fine-motor constructions to extended talk and vocabulary, promoting embodied cognition of early 
literacy (Glenberg et al., 2013). 

A New Model for Professional Learning 

Although significant modifications and careful lesson design were required to move a 
classroom intervention program online, we saw benefits in this new medium. First, as we employed 
a Zoom format, we recorded the online sessions without disruption to the students. Video 
recordings were later viewed with the kindergarten teachers together through a professional 
learning community. Then we collaboratively deconstructed the lesson design and delivery, 
developing an understanding of the activities that fostered oral participation and enhanced 
transference of early literacy learning. These recorded sessions also allowed for a close critique of 
the lesson design, enabling modifications of subsequent lessons through the design-based research 
process.  

While the use of Zoom required an additional adult helper to facilitate the online lessons, 
this was also beneficial in other ways. Parents were present during lessons and watched as the 
teachers modelled different interactions that build early literacy skills. For example, parents 
learned firsthand the types of questioning that can be highly engaging and build early inferencing 
skills during read-aloud. Had this intervention program been carried out in the classroom, parents 
and teachers would have had fewer opportunities to learn from this project. In the original project, 
parents would not have been present in the classroom. Teachers managing the remaining students 
in the classroom would also have had fewer opportunities to focus on the specific learning 
techniques employed by the researcher with small groups of students. By mobilizing our project 
online, we discovered important understandings of how to deliver an effective supplemental early 
literacy program using a medium that can reach more children in remote places. Research into the 
efficacy of online early literacy delivery versus in-person sessions and the measured effects on 
early literacy skill development added to our understanding of the power of this medium.  
 



Mathezer – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 39 

References 

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traits shape academic achievement and perceived learning? An experimental study of face-
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http://dx.doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v25.1974 

Chiu, C. H, Yang, H.Y., Liang, T. H., & Chen, H. P. (2010) Elementary students' participation 
style in synchronous online communication and collaboration. Behaviour & Information 
Technology, 29(6), 571–586. https://doi.org/10.1080/01449291003686195 

Dallimore, E. J., Hertenstein, J. H., & Platt, M. B. (2013). Impact of cold-calling on student 
voluntary participation. Journal of Management Education, 37(3), 305-341. 
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Glenberg, A., Witt, J., & Metcalfe, J. (2013). From the revolution to embodiment: 25 years of 
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Hirsch, E. D. (2003). Reading comprehension requires knowledge—of words and the world. 
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Ionescu, T., & Vasc, D. (2014). Embodied cognition: Challenges for psychology and 
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.156 

McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2012). Conducting Educational Design Research. Taylor and 
Francis.  

Moser, A., Zimmermann, L., Dickerson, K., Grenell, A., Barr, R., & Gerhardstein, P. (2015). 
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Plowman, L., McPake, J., & Stephen, C. (2012). Extending opportunities for learning: The role 
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.04.062 

Suggate, S., Pufke, E., & Stoeger, H. (2018). Do fine motor skills contribute to early reading 
development? Journal of Research in Reading, 41(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-
9817.12081  



Mathezer – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 40 

Wellsby, M., & Pexman, P. M. (2014). Developing embodied cognition: Insights from children’s 
concepts and language processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–10. 
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00506 

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Mathezer – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 41 

Appendix A 

Lesson Structure: Zoo Theme  
 
Opening: Welcoming Children, trouble shooting and circle share time 
Objective: Relationship building and connections to last week’s lessons 
 
Activity #1: Phonemic awareness song 
Objective: Discriminating sounds and snakes identifying initial sounds for different animals. 

Materials. Party in the Jungle by Kathleen Bostrom 
Instructions. Students will stand up and perform corresponding actions to the each of the 

animals that come up in the song. Students can brainstorm the sounds or actions the animals will 
make that match the first sound of the animals' name. Ex. Hippos – hip & hop, Baboons – Boo, 
boo, boo, boogaloo, Hyena – Hee, hee, ha, ha 
 Teachers can sing song on their own or link to YouTube video accompaniment 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR-c0FXR9sA 
 
Activity #2: Read Aloud: The View at the Zoo by Kathleen Bostrom  
Objective #1: First read through vocabulary and core knowledge building 

1. Introduce key vocabulary to facilitate discussion & knowledge. 
Tier 2 words. creatures, habitat, enclosure relationship, needs, view, primp, preen, 
prance, cause & effect words (if-then, because) 
Tier 3 words & Core knowledge words. “tower of giraffes”, Marsupials, Australia, 
pouch, symbiotic 
 Teachers use a text talk for this read aloud. They choose two or three words from 
the list above and introduce and discuss the target words before reading. During reading 
teachers stop at target words, discuss the target words and new context.  

2. Students identify (with action or auditory signal) rhyming words as teacher reads  
Possible rhyming words: bear/hair, nose/toes, straight/great, do-zoo, feet-beat, speak-
shriek, stop-pop, fright-bright, sleep-sheep 

Objective #2: Second read through students will focus on habitats and needs of animals 
1. Review what habitat and needs mean. Discuss in context of habitats and human needs 

and providing proper enclosures for animals.  
2. Stop at predetermined pages and ask students to discuss the things in the animal’s 

enclosures that the animals need. 
 
Activity #3: Building a zoo animal enclosure 
Objective: Facilitate fine-motor skills and real-world literacy application  
 Instructions and materials. Each student will receive an activity kit with the following,  

• Large bag of Lego bricks & base plate (labelled zoo materials) 
• Small bag of plastic zoo animals (labelled zoo animals) 
• Bag of 4 stand up signs covered in construction paper 
• Bag of writing supplies including letter stamps, markers, and animal stickers 

Children are given 15-20 minutes to choose an animal, build an enclosure and make 
signage for their animal. During the building process the teacher will interact with 



Mathezer – Emerging Perspectives (2021) 42 

students asking prompting questions and reminding students to think about the needs of 
the animals and the visitors to the zoo.  
Prompting questions: (focus on cause-and-effect words) 

o Why did you choose that animal? 
o What kind of needs does your animal have? 
o How will you make your animals comfortable? 
o What do visitors to the zoo need to know about your animal? 
o What kind of signs would you include by or around your animal’s enclosure? 
o How would you group the enclosures together? What makes the most sense for 

the animals? What makes the most sense for the humans? 
 
Activity 4: Share Out & Discussion 
Objective: Students incorporate new vocabulary as they engage in discussions to explain their 
thinking. 

Instructions. Share your enclosure and why you chose to build it the way you did? 
(Emphasize & prompt cause and effect words) Ask every student to listen carefully and comment 
afterwards on what they would have done differently and why? If two or more students choose 
the same animal how are their designs different? 
Activity #4: Closing Activity  
Objective: Students reflect on the session.  

Instructions. Students are asked to reflect on their favourite part of the lesson. Students 
describe one word or idea that was new to them today. Students can contribute ideas that they 
would do differently.  
 
Additional Optional Activities:  

1. Comprehension questions developing inferencing: Discussion of why the animals were 
relieved that the humans went home at the end of the day? (reference book pages 34-35) 

2. Have students sort their bag of plastic zoo animals. Explain how they categorized the 
groups (by colour, initial sound, where they live, what they eat). 

3. Students independently or with the teacher in the group could sort word cards with 
animal names on them by initial sound, number of syllables, number of letters. 

 

 

 


