Multi-Sensory Instruction:

Moving Beyond the Sand

Tray
multisensory Dec 15, 2022

When you hear the word "multi-sensory," what comes to mind? For many who
teach reading, especially to beginning readers, it may elicit images of hands-on
activities, plastic letters, and sand trays. These are wonderful tools to incorporate
into our structured literacy lessons (read more here), but there is so much more to
multi-sensory instruction beyond the sand tray.
What Is Multi-Sensory
Instruction?
Multi-sensory instruction means students simultaneously engage in two or more
sensory modalities to take in and express information. These modalities are visual,
auditory, kinesthetic/motor, and tactile. Multi-sensory teaching is often emphasized
by those who work with dyslexic learners. Why? Most programs used with
struggling or dyslexic learners are rooted in the Orton-Gillingham principles and
include the direct, structured, systematic, and explicit teaching of the organization
of language also referred to as Multisensory Structured Language Education (MSLE).
These instructional practices embed multi-sensory strategies into lessons to engage
the learner in techniques that connect visual-auditory-kinesthetic/motor-and tactile
(VAKT) connections.

For those of us teaching structured literacy, we see the impact that multi-sensory
strategies have on our learners. While it is difficult for researchers to tease out
multi-sensory strategies from structured literacy instruction, it has been agreed
upon that the positive impacts of multimodal methods in lessons are beneficial
through the cognitive and neurological sciences.
Current research on working memory and cognition demonstrates the benefits of
multimodal experiences with literacy elements. Incorporating multi-sensory
strategies within a structured literacy approach to address phonemes, graphemes,
letter knowledge, morphemes, etc., benefits students.

Simultaneous multisensory instruction purposefully integrates visual, auditory, and

kinesthetic-motor (for speech and writing) pathways to support memory and
learning of both oral and written language skills.

- Farrell, Mary L., White, Nancy Cushen; Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language
Skills, Ch. 2, p.48

In addition, many students with learning differences, such as dyslexia, have

coexisting deficits in working memory. One specific deficit for those with dyslexia is
difficulties in phonological skills, and many students also struggle with rapid
retrieval and short-term memory recall of verbal information. Using multi-sensory
strategies supports connecting the oral language with visual language structures
due to the activation of circuitry systems during language learning using a
multimodal approach. When teaching reading and spelling, these multi-sensory
experiences with linguistic units can activate more circuitry during language
learning than if we only use one singular sensory experience. Read more about
the reading brain here.

Multi-Sensory Instruction
within a Structured Literacy
Lesson
The science of reading is a collection of research about reading and the brain. This
research is not new, but the term "science of reading" has become more
mainstream as more people become aware of the decades of research and more
in-depth reviews of curriculums. With this movement, we must be cautious that the
science of reading doesn't become a buzzword. Structured literacy takes the
science of research and puts it into action. The elements of Structured Literacy
(phonology, sound-symbol associations, syllables, morphology, semantics, and
syntax) set up ALL learners for success. Read more about Structured Literacy here.
When planning for our structured literacy lessons and embedding multi-sensory
instruction, we must be mindful of why we use different components and how they
aid learning and teaching.

Multi-sensory strategies planned ahead of time can ensure that the chosen strategy
supports students and moves learning forward. In addition, multisensory strategies
will shift as students gain automaticity in reading skills. Knowing how we use these
different strategies and pieces is essential in focusing our instruction.

We can break down the common components of a structured lesson and see how
intertwined multi-sensory strategies are with learning to read and write. These
strategies connect and activate the regions of the brain and aid in creating a new
neural circuitry system for reading to occur.

Examples of multi-sensory
strategies within a
structured literacy lesson
*These graphics are a partial list of multisensory strategies used within structured
literacy lessons but designed to highlight those common teachings among those
practitioners, teachers, and therapists who implement the science of reading.
Phonology
Phonology is the science of speech sounds. This includes studying speech sounds
development in a language and phonological awareness and phonemic awareness
tasks. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are parts of the larger
phonological processing umbrella, which "includes many aspects of speech and
language perception and production" (Scarborough & Brady, 2002). Under this
larger umbrella, phonological awareness provides the underpinnings for reading
and writing.

Phonological awareness is the umbrella term that includes: phonemic awareness,

rhyming, syllables, word awareness, onset-rime, and phoneme manipulation.
Incorporating multisensory strategies within phonological and phonemic
awareness tasks includes the simultaneous engagement of the auditory-visual-
kinesthetic/motor-tactile modalities to solidify sound knowledge. Phonemic
awareness teaches students to hear and manipulate the smallest units of sound
and understand that spoken words are made up of sequences of speech sounds.

We can support phonemic awareness with students and engage the senses by
bringing awareness to the articulatory features of individual phonemes or speech
sounds as we link sounds to print, engaging the auditory-kinesthetic/motor
modalities. Having students look in the mirror to identify their mouth position,
tongue movement, and breath, when a sound is produced engages all the
multisensory strategies (VAKT). Asking students to identify the position of a sound
within a word engages the auditory memory, and when adding manipulatives or
letters, adds in visual, kinesthetic/motor, and tactile senses.

The National Reading Panel showed that connecting letters to sounds

(graphophonemic connections) during phonemic awareness tasks benefited
students in reading and spelling. Children, especially those with a language-based
learning difference like dyslexia, need direct, strongly auditory-based instruction in
each of the 44 English language sounds to build sound-symbol correspondences.
Read more about articulatory features here.

Teaching using as many learning pathways [multi-sensory strategies] in the brain

simultaneously enhances memory and learning (IDA, 2008). See examples of multi-
sensory strategies within the phonology component of a structured literacy lesson
in the above image.

Sound-Symbol
Correspondences
Sound-symbol correspondences encompass the alphabetic principle in
connection to speech sounds. The connection of phonemes to graphemes is critical
for learning to read and spell.

Linking sound to letter representation engages the auditory memory to the visual
memory. Connecting to letter formations brings in a connection to the kinesthetic-
tactile memory to help students remember the shape of a letter through muscle
movement, feel of the letter, and sound. Tasks like segmenting, blending,
manipulating sounds and letters are all examples of multisensory ways to connect
sounds to letters. *See more on the image above.

Many educators use sand trays during this part of the structured literacy lesson.
Sand trays provide a great VAKT connection to phoneme-grapheme
correspondences; however, this is just one way to bring multi-sensory strategies to
our lessons. The purpose of the sand for letter formation is to provide that
kinesthetic/tactile connection to feel the letter formation. For this reason, we want
to use the pad of our fingertips when writing on a textured surface. If we use
something else, we are removing the multi-sensory piece. In addition, we want to
use multi-sensory strategies to move students toward the application of skills in the
general education classroom and expectations.
Syllables + Syllable
Knowledge
Syllables + Syllable Knowledge includes patterns and the rules of our writing
system. Most structured literacy lessons include explicit teaching of syllables,
syllable division, and spelling conventions. Activities like segmenting syllables,
tapping syllables, breaking them apart, and building words with graphemes and
letter patterns engage multiple senses simultaneously. Activities like coding letters
and syllables, mapping speech to print, and segmenting syllables provide hands-on
multi-sensory engagement within lessons and empower students with strategies to
read new unknown words.

See the image above for more strategies.

Morphology
Morphology addresses our understanding of the smallest units of meaning within
our language. Students manipulate word parts (prefixes, suffixes, base words, and
roots) to break down and build words. Hands-on activities like manipulating blocks
with affixes and base words/roots/combining forms to create new words, building
word matrices, and engaging in reading and spelling all encompass multimodal
strategies. There are so many ways we can bring the senses into our learning! See
the image for more examples.

Syntax aids in our communication, including parts of speech and grammatical

conventions, order of words, and word usage. We can have students diagram and
label sentences, engaging in visual-auditory-kinesthetic-tactile senses. Activities like
building sentences with word cards or unscrambling word cards with cards or in
written form apply multi-sensory learning pathways. During our sessions, we may
have students complete tasks like these in oral or written form, engaging in reading
and writing tasks. See the image above for more examples of multi-sensory
strategies within a structured literacy lesson.
Semantics
Semantics refers to the layer of our language connected to meaning.
Comprehension is the connection of oral and written language and encompasses
vocabulary, word meaning, and word relations at the word, phrase, sentence, and
text level. Reading comprehension is our goal, and activities like drawing semantic
webs, paraphrasing text, and use of graphic organizers engage multiple learning
pathways. See the image for more examples.

As you can see, structured literacy lessons weave in multi-sensory strategies

throughout every component. While these are not comprehensive examples of the
many ways multi-sensory strategies are included in lessons, the visual-auditory-
kinesthetic-tactile connections are evident. Within a structured literacy lesson, all
levels of language are addressed, including sounds (phonemes), symbols
(graphemes), meaningful word parts (morphemes), word and phrase meaning
(semantics), sentences (syntax), longer passages (discourse), and the social uses of
language (pragmatics) (IDA, 2008).

When using a multi-sensory approach, we engage multiple areas of the brain, so we

have these complex connections among the areas engaged, which are highly
activated and widely distributed across the brain. What are some ways that you
weave multi-sensory strategies into your lessons?
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