Multi-sensory approach to teaching and learning
This assignment will discuss how a multi-sensory approach to teaching and learning can enhance children's acquisition of speaking and listening skills and phonic knowledge and skills. It will be referring to the key findings from the Rose Review and the advantages of using the Letters and Sounds programme as well as one example of phonics teaching undertaken during Autumn attachment.
The multisensory learning of phonics was first promoted in educational settings by Maria Montessori. In the 1930's Dr. Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham came up with a system of teaching structured and systematic rule-based phonics using a multi-sensory approach in order to cement new learning into long-term memory. Their approach encouraged learners to trace letters in order to reinforce shapes, names and sounds. Research done by the National Institutes of Health suggests that successful reading programmes incorporate a spelling component and that they involve multisensory reinforcement.
When children are taught using a multisensory approach they have the advantage of learning alphabetic patterns and words by using three pathways, eyes, ears and touch. Orton suggested that by teaching the "fundamentals of phonic association with letter forms both visually presented and reproduced in writing, until the correct associations were built up" it would be beneficial to children of all ages and abilities.
Research also indicates that multisensory reinforcement is one of the key components in successful reading programmes. During a multisensory activity children see the letter(s), hear the sound and feel how it is formed as they say it and/or write.
"We remember 20% of what we read, 30% of what we hear, 40% 0f what we see, 50% of what we say, 60% of what we do and 90% of what we see, hear, say and do."
It is not always possible to offer all elements but it would be useful to review teaching approaches and think about how many of them there are.
Pass the parcel:
During Autumn attachment I led a multi-sensory phonics session using the Jolly phonics programme. The activity was based on the game pass the parcel. The children were asked to pass the box around the group whilst singing a familiar song. When the song was finished the child left holding the box would pick out a letter. First the child who picked out the letter would sound it out then all the children would do it together, reinforcing it with the action. The child who picked out the letter would then be asked to choose an object from the middle of the group that began with that letter.
I chose to do this activity as it was physical and interactive. I felt it would be an activity that would engage the children instantly as it is based on a familiar party game that many of the children recognised. It was not too complicated and it was a fun way of reinforcing the letters and sounds that the children had already learnt. Some key findings of the Rose review state that "the phonic work done with young children should be multi-sensory in order to capture their interest, sustain their motivation and to reinforce learning in imaginative and exciting ways". This was the aim for this particular activity.
One particular study done to look into the multisensory approach to the teaching of phonics was carried out in London. The programme that the teachers used consisted of a multisensory approach to teaching related spelling rules. The teachers used a range of resources to teach the children the spelling rules such as power point presentations and talking puppets. The children were expected to learn 40 new words and the rules they needed to know in order to spell them correctly. Each word was presented to the children by either a dinosaur puppet or a boy puppet. The 40 words were split into blocks of ten and so that each child was given the chance to try and spell each word they were given coloured cards to hold up depending on how they thought the word was spelled. To gain a good understanding of the impact this approach had on the children the teachers asse