Multi-Sensory Activities to Support Literacy Goals
Let’s debunk another myth, or more specifically a ‘neuromyth’, shall we? Neuromyths are defined as a commonly-held false belief about how the mind and brain function and it refers to the translation of scientific findings into misinformation regarding education (https://www.edcan.ca/articles/neuromyths-in-education/). Learning styles and ‘left-brained’ vs ‘right-brained,’ are examples of two common neuromyths. The learning styles neuromyth is a theory that has led many of us to think that we each have one specific learning style and that children will learn better if they are taught in a way that matches their learning style. What this means for many educators and families is that we have focused on providing one-dimensional experiences and avoiding other opportunities for deeper understanding. It is a misconception that a child’s ways of learning are fundamentally different and require different educational practices. There is really no credible scientific data to suggest that there is any benefit in teaching them using only their specific learning style. While we do have learning preferences, it has been proven that providing multi-sensory or multimodal learning opportunities and experiences is beneficial to ALL learners and critical to many.
“Neurons that fire together, wire together”
Have you heard the phrase “neurons that fire together, wire together”? Canadian neurologist, Donald Hebb, used this phrase to reinforce the fact that every experience and physical sensation activates thousands of neurons forming a neural network. When those experiences are repeated over and over our brain learns to trigger the same neurons each time. A multi-sensory approach is using multiple pathways simultaneously. By using activities that involve multiple senses we can enhance learning patterns because it activates different parts of the brain, enhancing memory recall and processing speeds. Everyone benefits from a multi-sensory approach particularly when the sensory experiences are combined; it engages all learners and abilities. Many multi-sensory activities can be added naturally into our learning spaces because we experience the world around us through multi-sensory stimulation.
In our last post, we talked about the importance of using a structured literacy approach for reading instruction and that we have the research from the Science of Reading to show us how all children learn to read. This means that our instruction should be explicit, systematic, and cumulative. When we combine structured literacy and multisensory experiences for our students, we lock in the skills needed for automaticity and accuracy, leading to a greater understanding of the text, which is ALWAYS our goal! This is a huge benefit to students and absolutely critical for children with dyslexia. A previous President of the International Dyslexia Association, Margaret Byrd Rawson, said “Dyslexic students need a different approach to learning language from that employed in most classrooms. They need to be taught, slowly and thoroughly, the basic elements of their language, the sounds and the letters which represent them, and how to put these together and take them apart. They have to have lots of practice in having their writing hands, eyes, ears, and voices working together for conscious organization and retention of their learning.”
Let’s take a look at each of the senses and I’ll give some examples of how we can provide experiences that support ALL learners. Visual and auditory instructional practices are often the most common ways you will see information presented in a classroom or learning space, this is typically referred to as dual coding. The ‘stand and deliver’ method is prevalent from the time a child first encounters the classroom right through to post-secondary settings. However, we can be much more purposeful in our teaching methods by combining visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic activities to connect to language and literacy in meaningful ways. There are even opportunities for adding smell and taste into many of our lessons. For example, bring some m&m’s to your session when you teach the nasal sounds /m/, /n/ and /ng/. Provide words that are connected to the experience - “mmmm these are so good, do you want some mmmmore? I am eating these yummy treats and I smell chocolate. Now there are no more left.” With just a handful of these sweets, we can target a ton of different vocabulary that matches these 3 sounds and we added all 5 senses into the quick lesson. Smelly markers are one of my students’ favourite ways to practice spelling, the root beer Mr. Sketch marker is always a hit!
Multi-sensory Learning Spaces
A few ways we can make our literacy learning spaces more multi-sensory is by including manipulatives, graphic organizers, fine and gross motor gestures, or verbal and auditory cues to increase students’ acquisition of important phonics skills. These additions to our learning spaces provide scaffolding for the brain. Music is another creative addition because the rhythm, rhyme, and repetition engages the senses and increases motivation. The brain can retrieve the necessary info later, with minimal effort, increasing automaticity and accuracy.
Visual Demonstrations
When we include visual demonstrations in our lessons - we are providing strong images and spatial clues that are stored in our memory. These typically are relayed through colour, shapes, symbols, diagrams, graphic organizers, patterns, embedded imagery, etc. These strategies can be used for learning a new concept and to teach students how to actively study material for tests. An excellent example of this is by showing the life cycle of a butterfly during a science lesson. We may draw it on a whiteboard or anchor chart and the visual representation of each stage of the butterfly’s life is identified by an arrow. The circular image shows the never-ending pattern of an egg on a leaf, a caterpillar, a chrysalis, and then a butterfly, and then back to an egg on a leaf.
Right from birth, hearing children are exposed to sounds that represent objects in the world around them, helping them associate an image with its sound. If we hear a whistle blowing, our brain associates it with an image of the object itself and often combines it with a familiar experience such as a memory of a black, plastic whistle in the mouth of a referee at a sporting event. Often as educators, we provide instruction solely through talking about a specific subject. However, by including a video in a lesson filmed at a butterfly farm where children watch a time-lapse video of a caterpillar emerging from the chrysalis or laying an egg, we are combining a verbal description with a visual explanation showing the steps or process of metamorphosis. The information is further committed to memory because the brain is activated in two places at the same time.
Creating Kinesthetic Opportunities
Creating kinesthetic opportunities in our learning means that we provide the space for children to carry out physical activities through movement. Fine and gross motor learning consolidates a specific task into memory through repetition. These can include a hand gesture, facial expression, full-body movement, manipulating objects, role-playing, and more. It engages all learners, especially students with attention difficulties. Now think back to the life cycle of the butterfly. Imagine that we assign a specific body movement to each of the stages in the life cycle, it could look something like this. “Ok everyone, make your body small like a tiny egg on the leaf, your body is in a tight ball on the floor. Now wiggle along the ground like a caterpillar searching for some delicious leaves to chew on, you eat and eat and eat and you are stuffed. Slowly begin to turn around and gently spin your chrysalis and squeeze your body into a tight hug. You are inside your chrysalis where it is cozy and warm. Your body begins to turn to liquid helping you emerge into a gorgeous butterfly. Now slowly, slowly, slowly begin to uncurl your body and stretch out your arms like wings. Emerging butterflies move slowly and stay very still as they wait for their wings to dry. Now your wings are dry and you need some food so you are going to flutter from flower to flower looking for nectar - off you go little butterflies!”
Adding Tactile Experiences
Adding tactile experiences can increase sensitivity to the physical world; learning through tactile feedback. You may be familiar with sand trays as a way to include a multi-sensory experience during a spelling activity. As much as I love this idea and use it in my tutoring sessions, I always ask my students which options they prefer when using tactile materials. For some, sand doesn’t pose a problem, for others it can be a trigger for a negative sensory experience. Do you like walking in the sand or on the grass with bare feet? Some people hate it, so be mindful when adding tactile experiences to your learning spaces. Some of my alternate options are writing with your finger on your own arm, finger writing on plastic canvas mats that are used for cross-stitch crafting, or finger writing on various textured scrapbook papers. Creating letters out of playdough, wikki sticks or floam are also excellent choices to offer.
Putting it All Together
Okay, so how can we put all of this information together? Let me use the example of ways to improve letter-sound correspondences using a multi-sensory approach. Singing the alphabet is a great beginning tool but often children will lump together that infamous ‘lmnop’ as if it is one letter. Music is a great example of a learning style but that alone is not enough for children to understand the alphabetic principle. Now if we add in the actual letters in print while singing the alphabet, children begin to make a visual-auditory connection to the symbols and can start to map some of that information. Again, for some children, this may make a lot of sense and with minimal effort, they can continue to progress. However, many students need much for information and practice to master this important concept. When we can add an additional kinesthetic piece to this activity we take the learning up another notch. By simply adding our finger or pointer tool under each letter as we look and sing the alphabet we engage another part of the brain.
We can kick the learning into high gear when we can also add a tactile component to this same alphabet activity. Try adding one of my previously mentioned tips like a textured piece of scrapbook paper, or even your own arm, and print the letters as you sing. An alphabet strip can be used for added visual support. Now as we sing the alphabet, we can also practice printing it - we’ve added visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, verbal, and musical components to our session which will support strong neuronal connections. Tactile feedback can help to improve muscle memory for both fine and gross motor skills, like printing the alphabet.
Another key to remember is that correct letter formation is critical for reading and spelling. Teaching children the proper directionality of print in their language is crucial. For example, in English, we read left-to-right and from the top of the page to the bottom, this is exactly how we should form all of our letters too. You know those tricky b’s and d’s? The next time you see a letter reversal, check which way the child is printing that ‘b’ or ‘d’. Did they start both letters with a line and then a curve? If so, one of those letters was formed backward. Almost all of the letters of the alphabet can be made with one continuous movement, which means our pencil does not need to lift off the paper as we print. Strong knowledge of print concepts is vitally important and many children struggle with the understanding that letters and words hold meaning, that print is the text that we read, or that there is a specific directionality of print.
When we understand that in English we read from left-to-right we realize that when we print the letter ‘b’ we start with the line going down the page and then without lifting our pencil, we continue to move up the line halfway and then form the curve to the right. Again, reading from left-to-right, when we see the letter ‘d’ in print, we see the CURVE first. So when we teach how to print the letter ‘d’ we should start with that curve, or as Handwriting Without Tears calls it the “magic ‘c’ formation.” Then without lifting our pencil, we continue the curve into an upward line and then draw the pencil down again to finish off the letter. A multi-sensory activity to include is using colourful window markers, building the letter out of playdough or wikki stix, fingerprinting in shaving foam or chocolate pudding, or making up a song to reinforce the important concept. One of my favourites that I use for the correct way to form the lowercase letter ‘e’ is to sing, “tippy-toe across the street up and around the corner.” I literally hear my students sing it to themselves when they come to that tricky letter. I created an amazing resource that uses the multi-sensory approach to help students master those tricky b’s and d’s. You can find that resource here.
Let’s conclude with a list of the many benefits of including a multi-sensory approach:
Benefits of Including a
Multi-Sensory Approach
Improves working memory and reduces cognitive load
Increases processing speed - faster access to information
Supports neural plasticity - ability to reorganize information and form new connections when multiple areas of the brain are activated simultaneously
Increases concentration, focus, engagement, and motivation
Builds critical thinking skills and supports metacognition - awareness and understanding of your own thought processes - what do I need to solve this problem?
Lower stress and anxiety of new learning situations
Offers creative ways to learn new information
Supports executive functioning skills such as planning and prioritizing, task initiation, organization of information
Builds strong cross-curricular connections
Provides opportunities for sustained attention
Have I convinced you to add multi-sensory activities to your learning spaces yet?
Well, here’s more. Check out my list of 10 ways to add multi-sensory activities to your literacy learning space this week.
10 ways to add
Multi-Sensory Activities to Your Literacy Learning Spaces
Tactile feedback - use textured paper or materials to support correct letter formation - see posts on IG
Playdough and wikki sticks to build the letters - see my posts on IG
Lego pieces to work on phonological skills - see my 5 posts on IG
Sensory bins with hidden mini objects, target spelling patterns, or CVC word cards
Hula hoops on the ground to sort common spelling patterns such as the 2 sounds of ‘th’
Painters tape on the ground to jump from sound to sound in a word
Math counters and a number line or a 10-frame to count how many words in a sentence, how many syllables in a word, how many phonemes in a word, including subatizing concept
Gross motor movements to count syllables - dribble an imaginary basketball for each sound you hear in a word and then throw it in the pretend hoop for blending it back together
Fine motor movements to count phonemes - use your fingers to count how many syllables or sounds are in a word
Play basketball with high-frequency words - Print words on small pieces of paper and have your child read the word, then crumple the paper and throw it in a small basket - they shoot, they score!
Additional Resources
b and d reversals - French Fry Game
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