Benefits of Multi-Sensory Approach to Reading Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities
Students with learning disability (LD) are confronted with monumental difficulties in learning to read with normal methods that focus primarily on the visual and auditory processing. Multi-sensory techniques such as the Orton-Gillingham completely transform instruction of reading to students with LD by employing multiple pathways simultaneously to build strong neural pathways that support literacy learning.
Making Neural Pathways Stronger
The Orton-Gillingham approach and other multi-sensory approaches exploit visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile routes simultaneously. If a dyslexic child or child with some other learning difficulty views a letter, says the sound, tracks the form, and performs a corresponding body action, he creates multiple neural representations of the same information. Such redundancy creates redundant channels for processing information, effectively bypassing neurological weak links. Research suggests that such multi-sensory engagement facilitates the establishment of new neural pathways that build upon themselves in the long run with regular practice.
Supporting Different Learning Profiles
Learning disabilities appear in every child differently, with differences in strengths and weaknesses. Multi-sensory instruction has the built-in variability to fit this diversity because it delivers information through more than one mode. A child with a difficulty in auditory processing may get information mostly through the kinesthetic and visual modes, and a visually processing-disabled child will receive more information via auditory and kinesthetic routes. This variability provides for learning irrespective of which systems are impoverished.
Improving Memory Construction and Recall
Movement incorporation and sensory input significantly facilitate memory growth in LD learners. Through children tapping syllables, sandpaper letters or letter tiles words, or retracing hand traces for sound notation, they create rich, multi-sensory memories. Learning activities based on sensoria rather than mere visual symbols are less retrievable in retrieval. Touching reading teaching becomes powerful stimuli to memory to enable children to access phonetic patterns more reliably when reading by themselves.
Raising Engagement and Focus
Most children with learning disabilities also have difficulty with attention and concentration. Multi-sensory instruction effectively addresses this challenge by providing kinesthetic, interactive learning activities that engage students. The range of activities—from writing letters in the air with your finger to gliding magnetic letters to creating words with modeling clay—avoids mental fatigue and avoids the frustration that comes with instruction based on prolonged attention to print. This increased interest translates to longer, more efficient learning sessions and more instruction time overall.
Systematic Development of Phonological Awareness
The methodical, sequential organization of programs such as Orton-Gillingham provides LD students with intentional phonological awareness instruction that they need. Multi-sensory operations allow one to make hazy-sounding abstractions concrete. Kids divide words into physical chunks by sliding tokens representing each sound, blend sounds by pressing tiles letters together, or erase sounds by removing a tile from a physical array. These concrete representations are the connection between phonological abstractions and how they get used when reading.
Promoting Autonomy and Self-Recovery
Multi-sensory techniques provide LD children with tangible methods of self-controlling unknown words. When faced with difficult reading, these students have learned procedures—tapping syllables, tracing words while sounding them out, or hand gesture substitutions for hard-to-sound-out letters—that they can execute independently without instructor guidance. Strategic autonomy develops self-confidence and minimizes learned helplessness so common with reading challenges.
Promoting Emotional Well-being
Most importantly, perhaps, multi-sensory reading instruction recognizes and adapts to neurological differences instead of requiring children to conform to instructional approaches that are not compatible with their learning style. This adaptation minimizes frustration, avoids reading avoidance, and maintains self-esteem. Children succeed sooner and more reliably, gaining confidence that supports sustained effort in still difficult work for LD learners. One can check https://www.facebook.com/chicagohometutor to know about Chicago Home Tutor.
