Multisensory Language Instruction

Multisensory instruction uses the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning pathways simultaneously to teach students to read and spell.  It is essential to allow students to connect what they see (visual) with what they hear (auditory), and feel (kinesthetic) to create meaning in language learning. 

Multisensory language instruction teaches:

• Phonemic Awareness
• Phonology
• Sound-symbol Associations (letters and their sounds)
• Syllable Instruction
• Morphology (base words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes)
• Syntax (grammar and sentence variation)
• Semantics (written language comprehension, meaning of language)

Essential Elements of a Multisensory teaching approach:

Multisensory: A multisensory approach must involve all pathways to learning: auditory, visual, tactile, and most importantly, the kinesthetic pathway involving both the hand and the muscles of the mouth. Students have to be actively involved in their own learning.

Alphabetic - Phonetic: Many students need to understand the nature of our form of written language in order to learn it.  They need to understand: 1) that a letter has both a name and a sound; 2) that a spoken word is made up of a sequence of individual sound; 3)that letters that march visually, left to right across a page, match spoken/speech sounds from their mouths that sequence in time. 

Synthetic – Analytic: In math, numbers are conceptualized, expressed, and operated on. Numeracy is communicated through 10 digits in an infinite arrangement. Math has a language of its own that must be directly taught.

Structured: For many students, the teaching of math has to be carefully structured and directly taught. A student is helped by learning number sense and is taught how to organize them.

Sequential: Many students have difficulty with sequencing. They need to learn to read numbers from left to right, but whole numbers increase as they move from right to left. They need to learn math concepts, going from simple to complex language patterns.

Cumulative: Each piece of new learning needs to be securely learned and connected to what is already known, so that it becomes a part of what is known and can be used. A teacher needs to teach a student where the new information fits with what has already been learned.

Repetitive: Merely understanding math logic is not sufficient for many students. They need to over learn so that dealing with basic facts becomes automatic. A teacher needs to cycle back often for review. The amount of repetition needed depends on the student’s learning needs.

Cognitive: Multisensory, structured, math teaching is geared to training logical, independent thinking about numbers. It teaches students to use math language as they think about numbers. Many students need to discover that they can use reasoning to build mastery. Also, they need to understand why they are having difficulty with written math, and why they need to learn in this particular way.

Diagnostic: A teacher must be able to observe a student’s confusions and to understand what elements of math need to be taught or reviewed to eliminate that student’s specific uncertainties.

Prescriptive: A teacher needs to know what teaching steps to prescribe for a student and how to implement those steps into an appropriate instructional plan to assure that the student makes progress.

The Orton-Gillingham Multisensory Approach

Orton-Gillingham is a structured, phonetically-based system, which involves correctly learning the sounds of individual letters using a multisensory approach.  Sounds are taught explicitly in isolation.  Instruction uses the visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic sensory learning channels simultaneously.

The Orton-Gillingham approach practices reading, writing, and spelling, not as isolated subjects, but as different aspects of the language function.

Using the systematic Orton-Gillingham approach, material is organized and taught in a logical order that fits the structure of our language.  Through the use of a structured, sequential process, the learner moves step by step from simple material to that which is more complex, as the necessary body of language skills is assimilated.  The curriculum is cumulative, each step based on those already mastered.

The systematic decoding-encoding process allows for students to master the 85% of our language which is phonetic and teaches them to make intelligent responses to the other 15% of the language that must be memorized.