Traditional strategies for introducing and teaching literacy are not always successful. In fact teaching literacy skills is one of the most common challenges educators face when working with children who are not performing at their grade level, and more often than not teaching to one main learning style isn’t effective. On the other hand, combining explicit and other forms of more traditional instruction with a multi-sensory approach activates whole-brain learning. Multi-sensory strategies combine listening, speaking, reading, and a tactile activity, increase connection in different brain areas and activate new neural pathways, creating a more constructive brain response.
Multi-sensory approaches that incorporate visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities engage the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, and and the Angular Gyrus. The frontal lobe is responsible for speech, language, and comprehension, the temporal lobe works on decoding, and the Angular Gyrus’s main function is to connect various brain areas for higher reasoning and comprehension of content. A study conducted in 2022 by the University of Sao Paulo focused on how teaching with a multi-sensory approach increases the retention-length of the skill as well as providing a higher level of scaffolding to build from. Another recent study, conducted by Professor Scott Waddell at the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, demonstrated how multi-sensory learning also improves memory.
Multi-sensory lessons involve adding manipulatives, gestures, and auditory cues to increases a student’s ability to acquire and maintain phonics skills. Common multi-sensory strategies include sand or shaving cream writing, air writing, sandpaper letters, site word towers, word building, and tapping out sounds. These are only a few of many multi-sensory literacy strategies! Including two or three of these strategies in literacy lessons fully engages the brain making the skill much more memorable and meaningful.
