Three Literacy Tips Related to Multisensory Teaching

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As an Orton-Gillinghamteacher, I use an Orton-Gillingham approach in my lessons. This means I create multisensory activities in everything I do with my dyslexic students. Think of a triangle when you picture multisensory instruction. Here is a visual I created with Jason from A Sketchy Guy to illustrate what is happening when we employ a multisensory approach or The Orton-Gillingham method. It involves saying, hearing and writing and/or touching all together, as much as possible.

Grab this free poster set here.

One of the multisensory tools I use during a lesson is a sand tray. This is a great tactile tool to use when introducing new phonograms. Children can trace it in the sand while the vocalize the name, the sound it makes and a key word. Recently, I had a student declare he HATED using the sand tray. He literally cringed at the idea when I took it out. I was a bit surprised because we used it all the time. Some kids just don’t like the feel of sand on their fingers. It may stick to their skin or get under their fingernails. So today, I am sharing THREE alternatives to the sand tray that you are going to LOVE. Are you ready?

This is an old Melissa and Doug wooden boxes that had some magnets or lacing beads in it when I bought it. SAVE THOSE WOODEN BOXES. They have so many good uses. I purchased some sheets of glitter paperwith a a nice stiff foam and adhesive backing. After trimming it down to the size of this wooden box, I peeled off the backing and stuck it inside. Glitter paperhas a nice sand papery feel for kids to use with tracing. They won’t see the letter they form on it like a sand tray, but it has a similar strategy to sky writing. You can observe their letter formation and help make adjustments as needed. If you don’t have a wooden box, GUESS WHAT?? You can peel off the backing of the glitter paper, and stick it inside or outside of the back cover of a composition notebook. Check here for more Orton-Gillingham notebook ideas.

2. Use gel bags.I picked up some Ziploc storage bags, a huge bottle of hair gel, and some glittery Duck tape. Fill the bag with all the hair gel. I taped the bag down onto a piece of white cardboard I had. Your student can trace with the TIP of their finger, not their nail for this one. Nails can puncture the gel bag and that equals a hot mess. 😉 If you just want to use the glitter Duck tapeinstead of a gel bag, peel a long piece off and stick it to the bag of a composition notebook. It has a nice tactile surface, too!

3. Use photographs.If you have children with sensory issues, a photograph of a sand tray with the phonogram traced in it may be useful. A child can trace in the “sand” and still get tactile feedback. I have a whole set of these alphabet sand tray photographs in my TpTstore. You can grab this set for free by clicking here!

Remember: Multisensory teaching is good teaching for ALL kids, not just ones with reading disabilities. Using visual, auditory and kinesthetic/tactile techniques while reading, and spelling help to create new neural pathways in the brain. Pretty powerful stuff! Be sure to check out another post on multisensory teaching for learned words (also known as sight words) here. Thank you so much for stopping my blog today. Please be sure to sign up for my newsletter if you have a spare minute. Now head to the other wonderful literacy blogs and enter the Rafflecopterbelow to win a TpT gift certificate! Have a great weekend!
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