Multisensory Instruction
A Very Effective Intervention
by Jane Ashley
Resource Teacher and Educational Therapist
Three years ago, during my first full year of teaching, I found myself face-to-face with a student in my 8th grade special education class in the Berkeley Public Schools who couldn't read or write. It was then that I realized I needed more training than my Mild/Moderate Education Specialist credential had given me. The following summer, I enrolled in an intensive, month-long Slingerland teacher training program. One year later, after having taught using Slingerland's structured multisensory approach, I was informed by the Special Education Director of the Castro Valley Public School District that the Star test numbers for the students in my elementary resource program had risen by MORE THAN 25 points.
My training and subsequent experience convinced me that structured multisensory teaching could be used in ANY classroom. The question is, why isn't it? I have yet to meet a general or special education teacher who wouldn't relish the chance to learn teaching strategies and methods that they could use across the board to enable them to reach more students. The problem is that structured multisensory methods are NOT comprehensively taught in teacher education programs — we may know they exist and generally how to use them, but not in a systematic, comprehensive, and inclusive way.
Teaching using a structured multisensory approach builds and enforces a strong foundation for all children. For example, Talia, a bright and capable 4th grader, was well known in the school for not being able to read or write. When she started in my program, she read at a beginning 1st grade level. Using the Slingerland approach in a classroom environment, I taught her to write in cursive while enforcing her sound-symbol relationships as we systematically moved through the six vowel patterns in our language. I also taught her how to blend and segment sounds and how to read in smooth phrases to enforce fluency and promote comprehension. Most significantly, I gave her strategies to use to decode and write. I did not overload her and daily reinforced her learning using multisenory techniques. By the end of the first year, Talia was reading at a 2nd grade level and this year is reading at a beginning 3rd grade level. Talia returned to school this year and said, "I don't know what you do, but it's the only thing that's worked for me."
All teachers are pressured to raise test scores. My students' scores rose from the 10th to the 38th percentile in my first year using the Slingerland approach and Making Math Real — two systematic, structured multisensory methods of instruction. As clearly evidenced by the test scores, my resource students were able to integrate the methods and strategies they learned in my resource program into their general education classrooms. As a result they achieved at higher levels and experienced greater success.
As many as one in five people has dyslexia. That means that in a general education class of 30 children, approximately six will experience some type of trouble with language tasks in the areas of reading, spelling or writing. Structured multisensory language instruction enhances memory and learning. It enables us to access the stronger areas of our brain to compensate for the weaker.
Most teachers are aware of the various learning modalities. Teaching using a structured multisensory approach engages visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning and its success is research-based. The beauty of multisensory instruction is that it can be used in all subject areas and infused into all levels of intervention to make the curriculum accessible to a larger number of students, so fewer are left behind both academically and emotionally.
Teachers and administrators are suffocating under the ever-present and weighty issue of test scores and the increasing demands to meet standards. For that reason, I urge teacher education credential programs to require that research-based structured multisensory instructional techniques, such as the Slingerland approach, be a part of their education programs. Isn't it our responsibility to ensure that all students have better access to learning and to support our teachers by giving them the tools to experience greater success with a larger number of their students?
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