Multisensory Teaching Techniques in the Classroom

Using Multisensory Teaching Techniques

Multisensory learning strategies are crucial not just for kids with dyslexia, or within Orton-Gillingham lesson plans, it is good solid teaching for ALL students. Incorporating multisensory learning tools into your classroom lessons will not replace intervention services, but it will make classroom lessons more accessible to students with learning differences. 

As you know, multisensory teaching techniques are valuable not only for students who struggle with reading and writing skills, but for all students. Using a variety of senses helps with memory and retrieval and allows a student to support their areas of weakness with their areas of strength. Summer is a great time to refresh your teaching, learn new skills and plan a different way of doing things for the next school year. Hopefully, that way will be multisensory.

Here are even more ways to incorporate multisensory learning strategies into your school day. 

If you missed PART ONE of this blog series, be sure to read, "Multisensory Teaching Strategies in the Classroom."

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Multisensory Teaching Strategies in the Classroom: Part One

Multisensory Teaching Strategies in the Classroom

Part One: Using Multisensory Teaching Techniques

Multisensory teaching is not just crucial for kids with dyslexia, or within Orton-Gillingham lesson plans, it is good solid teaching for ALL students. Incorporating multisensory learning tools into your classroom lessons will not replace intervention services, but it will make classroom lessons more accessible to students with learning differences. 

Dyslexia is more than likely under identified, particularly in gifted students that may be performing at the average of their class or student with a mild disability and strengths that offset their challenges to some degree. For those kids that are likely to fall through the cracks, the anxiety and stress associated with school tasks is painful. Incorporating good multisensory teaching techiques in your classroom is a breath of fresh air for those children.

Multisensory teaching means that when information is presented, the learner is simultaneously using multiple senses. Visual, auditory and kinesthetic (or tactile) are the 3 primary senses that students use and these correspond to the visual, auditory and motor (or muscle) memory. The more pathways and connections a student uses for learning a new item of knowledge, the more pathways they have for retrieval of this information. Because so often children are asked to perform in school using what may be for them their weakest areas, linking these all together can act as a bridge between a child’s strengths and weaknesses. 

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Seven Summer Reading Tips For Struggling Readers

When I think of summer vacation, I have visions of popsicles, playing in the sprinkler, lemonade stands, long summer evenings and lazy days reading in a hammock. As an educator, I know that for struggling readers, reading is often the last thing on their mind when they think of relaxation. But,  I also worry about summer learning loss or “the summer slide”. On average, students lose one month of school learning during the summer vacation. For students with dyslexia, the loss is likely even greater and will be more time consuming for them to regain than their peers. However, children with dyslexia have worked very hard all school year long and should definitely make time for fun and play. Striking a balance is key.

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The Top Ten Books About Dyslexia for Parents and Teachers

Whether you are a parent of a child with dyslexia, an adult that has dyslexia, a tutor or interventionist that works with children with dyslexia or a classroom teacher that has students with dyslexia in your class, there is one thing that we all have in common. We need to actively seek out information and knowledge in order to advocate for our students (or ourselves). Although awareness is increasing, it is still necessary to be proactive and seek out resources and learning independently.

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Effective Comprehension Strategies For Struggling Readers

If you have a child or students who struggles with reading comprehension, there are a number of reasons why this is happening.

These include:

• weak decoding due to poor phonological awareness skills that have compounded over the years and impacted a child's ability to make meaning of text
• weak fluency skills
• poor vocabulary development due to a language-based reading disability 
• learning English as a second language 
• a student who may have memorized a large bank of words in the early years as a compensatory strategy, instead of actually learning to decode effectively, so when text complexity increases, old memorization tricks no longer work
• a child who may decode beautifully, but cannot comprehend a word they just read or even give you a simple retelling. Admittedly, this has probably been the TOUGHEST scenario as a teacher for me to remediate. Not impossible, just tricky.
• a student who may be a very literal thinker due to a lower IQ or ASD

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