MULTI-SENSORY TEACHING: A Great Teaching Methodology Not Just for Students with Special Needs

Multisensory Instruction involves using visual, auditory and kinesthetic instructional methods to allow the student to engage in the subject matter and conceptualize ideas and information in more than one way.

He’s my wiggly, hands-on learner, but she is my artistic, visual and creative child…”  I am sure you can relate and realize that each child learns and prefers to learn in different ways.  One might do better with information he hears, another might find it easier to learn by seeing the information and yet a different child might prefer to use his hands.  Incorporating all three of these learning modalities into your child’s educational experiences is called Multisensory Instruction and can help you design an engaging and customized learning atmosphere in your home school.

For example, in a multi-sensory instructional lesson on trees, you might offer your child a book about trees and you might also read a book to your child about trees.  You would then take the child outside to see trees, maybe pull leaves off from the different varieties of trees, do leaf rubbings in a nature journal or sketch pad, and have the child see if he can identify which types of trees the leaves came from.  The child may even make a pressed leaf collection in a science notebook.  Young children may sort leaves by shape, size, and color.  This is a multisensory lesson.  Information has been conveyed not just through sight and hearing but through movement and touch as well.  There was an auditory, a visual and a kinesthetic component to this lesson.

 

Multisensory Instruction was pioneered by Orton-Gillingham which is an approach to reading for struggling learners.  The Orton-Gillingham method uses sight, sound, and movement to help dyslexic children form connections between language and words.  This isn’t just for struggling readers though.  Many math programs use manipulatives to help with math concepts.  Science tends to be multisensory because the student is performing experiments as well as completing lab reports and, programs that use music to help children memorize facts (days of the week, months, multiplication tables etc.) are incorporating Multisensory Instruction as well.

 

Benefits of Multi-sensory Instruction:

 

Any student can benefit from multisensory instruction, but research shows that struggling learners derive the most benefit from this type of instruction.

 

• Using different senses can help struggling learners with information collection, teach them to work through difficult problems, help them make connections between previous knowledge and new information, and develop problem solving skills by approaching ideas from different angles.

 

• Multisensory instruction also teaches children what their learning strengths and weaknesses are and gives them a variety of tools and strategies to process and show what they are learning.

 

• Multisensory or multi-modality learning can help to motivate reluctant learners and engage students who may have met with academic failure and thus are struggling with fear, anxiety, or “learned helplessness”. It can be a great way to re-ignite interest and motivation!

 

One of the beauties of Multisensory Learning is that it takes into account that every child learns in different ways, not just a child with special needs.  By giving the child multiple ways to take information in, work with it, process it, and demonstrate knowledge and understanding in a variety of ways, each child is given his best chance at success and can thrive!

 

Authors -Faith Berens

Guest Author-Shelley Whisenant, M.S.