DAC episode 22- What is multisensory instruction?

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie. [00:00:02] Speaker B: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to DAC Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We are so happy that you can join us. We're both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids, strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will all be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone and we want to give voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our children grow and succeed in school, in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation. [00:00:37] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 22 of DAC Dyslexia and Coffee. The concept of the week is how we like to start our show. So the concept of the week is our opportunity to open our door a little bit and let our listeners into what are we teaching in intervention? So today, our topic, our concept of the week, is the floss rule. Okay. The floss rule is a spelling generalization that says when we have an F, L, S or z, right after a short vowel in a one syllable word, we double that last consonant. So examples, the word cliff, C, L, I, F, F, spill, S, P, I, L, L, miss, M, I, S, S and fuzz, F, U, Z, z. [00:01:40] Speaker B: Can I tell you that when I first started training, I did not know there was a rule for this? I thought we had to memorize this. [00:01:47] Speaker A: Yes. [00:01:47] Speaker B: And I was floored that there was an actual rule because didn't learn it when I was younger. [00:01:53] Speaker A: So generally we teach this one very early on to our students. And I love teaching this one because I love teaching this one especially to my older students because I think my younger students, they're kind of like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But my older students generally have that same reaction. And they are like, for many of them, that's one of the first times that they see the value in this kind of instruction and they get really excited because they didn't know it was a rule. And now they do. Kind of a funny story about this one. I was teaching this one free recently to one of my newer students and his dad was sitting in on the intervention session and his dad was kind of sitting there, you know, half paying attention, right. Just being there in the room. And then I taught the rule and he both hands, like slammed on the table and looked at me and goes, what? Really? Do you know how much more successful I would have been in school if I had known? Like, that's a rule. So, yeah, Floss rule is really. That's a fun one to teach. [00:03:27] Speaker B: It is really fun to teach. Yeah. [00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that one's a fun one to teach. [00:03:31] Speaker B: And our topic today is a fun one, too. [00:03:33] Speaker A: Yes. Especially for you. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Nicole gets to wear her OT hat. [00:03:38] Speaker B: Today because it's about multi sensory instruction. What is it? [00:03:45] Speaker A: So what is it? What is multi sensory instruction? [00:03:51] Speaker B: Basically, research shows that when you use more than one sense, you learn more. So it builds more connections throughout the brain so students are able to understand new information and to recall it at a later time. And this is especially important for students who struggle with reading. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:11] Speaker B: Basically, it makes connections in the brain using neurons. So, yeah, it's kind of a cool thing. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it is very cool. It is. One of the core tenets of Orton Gillingham approach or structured literacy approach to teaching is that our teaching is multisensory. So. So we thought it'd be really fun to explore what that means and how we do that. [00:04:43] Speaker B: So the first sentence is the visual sense, which we use all the time in our training. [00:04:50] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:51] Speaker B: Or an instruction. Right. So we have phoneme cards, which basically are cards with different letters on it. And we have the students look at the cards and then they say the sounds of whatever those letters are. [00:05:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:05:05] Speaker B: So they can be like, if you showed them a T, they would see T. Or if you showed them sh, they would be sh. [00:05:17] Speaker A: So another way we might use the visual sense is something called Elkonin boxes. The other name for that is sound boxes. So this is a visual tool that breaks down words into their individual sounds. So each box represents a sound. So if we had a word like stuff. Right. That would need four boxes. Right. One for the S to represent stuff, one for the T to represent T, one for the U to represent, and then the last one, my floss rule listeners, we would write FF in one box because it would be one sound. [00:06:07] Speaker B: Correct. We also might have the students draw a box for each sound in a word. So kind of giving them a different way to do it where they are using the boxes and able to use also kinesthetic. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Because you're also writing or drawing, depending on how they're doing the boxes. [00:06:29] Speaker A: Yep. Or having students listen to word and place a token in each box for the sound they hear. So, again, you know, that is a way we're talking about this under visual. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:45] Speaker A: But if they're moving something that's also kinesthetic and it's also auditory because you're listening to a sound. [00:06:51] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. A lot of these Senses or these activities. You have multiple senses going at the same time. [00:07:00] Speaker A: That's right. So some other visual cues. The physical words on a page. Right. [00:07:12] Speaker B: Pretty. Yep. [00:07:13] Speaker A: Yep. The sentences, the physical materials that we're presenting to those students. Right. Those. They are looking at them. [00:07:24] Speaker B: We also have lots of posters in our rooms that have visual cues or parts of the spelling rules, so they can kind of use those as a visual cue. [00:07:37] Speaker A: A lot of our students will kind of try and, like, recall the poster. Right. You can kind of look at them go, oh, I'm trying to. I'm trying to picture it in my mind, which is great. [00:07:48] Speaker B: That's an. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Another really great learning tool is that visualization piece, kind of committing it to memory. That's awesome. Graphic organizers are another visual tool that can be tremendously helpful for our students, especially those who are very, very overwhelmed by a huge block of text. That's often a really good stair step for them to really see how things can come together. [00:08:24] Speaker B: Highlighters. I was always a highlighter person. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Yes. I love a highlighter. [00:08:29] Speaker B: Me too. My books in college, everything was highlighted. [00:08:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:34] Speaker A: I went a little strong on the highlighters. Maybe they weren't that effective, but I liked them. [00:08:39] Speaker B: I did, too. Lots of colors, too. [00:08:42] Speaker A: Yes. Also using cover, like overlays, sometimes we might. Instead of using, like, a physical highlighter, sometimes we can use a color cover. A color overlay on text to draw attention to a certain part of the text or a certain sentence. Or a certain sentence. There has been some research on using cover overlays for dyslexic learners to present them with text. None of that research has really ever come back definitively like, it's the best way to go. But I am not opposed to playing around with it for our students. For some of them, they really do find it helpful and great. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:35] Speaker A: There has been no evidence that they have been harmful. So great. [00:09:40] Speaker B: Pointing to words, using. Yep. To keep on track. Right. That's pretty important for our students. Or using a bookmark or a note card to isolate the lines of text. [00:09:52] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. It's kind of reduce the visual distractions. Right. Not only do we want to present them information visually, we also want to reduce some of the distractions too. [00:10:07] Speaker B: It's both. [00:10:08] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Auditory or sound techniques that we use. [00:10:17] Speaker A: Cat. So these ones are fun. We use. Right. Tapping or clapping as a way to segment either words in a sentence or syllables or sounds. It really depends on what we're targeting. [00:10:33] Speaker B: Right. We also use it sometimes with spelling. [00:10:35] Speaker A: Yep. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Yep. [00:10:39] Speaker A: When we're doing our phonological awareness in the beginning, generally, that's kind of how we would warm up with a student that's a lot of auditory segmenting words and blending words. So as a reminder, segmenting would be something like this. I would give a word boat, and then I would ask my student, what are the sounds in boat? And that student would have to say B O T, boat. Or I might do the opposite, which would be blending, where I would give them B O T. And I would want them to say boat. Generally, when we're doing that kind of work, that's all auditory. And we're going to incorporate other pieces of that later on in our lesson, right? Yeah. [00:11:34] Speaker B: Clipping sounds. [00:11:35] Speaker A: Oh, yes. What does that mean? What is clipping sounds? [00:11:40] Speaker B: Ah. [00:11:44] Speaker A: So for example, if I was a student and I was saying B, then. [00:11:50] Speaker B: We would try to clip that so they would just be B. You don't want the at the end of the sound because they're going to think that there's more sounds in that word than there really is. And they might read or spell it differently than it should be read or sped spelled. [00:12:06] Speaker A: Yep, exactly. [00:12:09] Speaker B: We do that a lot. [00:12:10] Speaker A: A lot, yes. Usually there's like also a visual cue for that too, that if I'm having a student who kind of chronically is inserting what we would call that schwa sound on the B, I would use my fingers to make a cut motion like I'm having scissors, which I'm doing right now, even though listeners can't see me. This is so ingrained. It's so funny. [00:12:36] Speaker B: We also do a lot of writing while we say the word letter names or sounds out loud at the same time that they write. That's a really good way to ingrain it into the autonomic memory. And then, of course, just oral reading. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:56] Speaker B: Reading out loud. [00:12:57] Speaker A: Reading out loud. So, you know, all those parents out there, most of you are already doing these things with your kids at home. So you're already incorporating this multisensory piece just by reading out loud with your kids. So good job. [00:13:20] Speaker B: Kinesthetic or touch? [00:13:22] Speaker A: Yes. This one can be so important for our students, especially our really, really wiggly ones, or our students who really kind of crave some sensory input. This can be a great way of building those motor pathways in the brain, those neurons. One of the things we know about a dyslexic brain is that in a dyslexic brain, they're doing kind of all the work in sort of one area of the brain where a non dyslexic learner is actually doing the work in multiple areas of the brain. And that's why we think the dyslexic learners are struggling. So the reason we're building these multisensory things in is because we want them to be processing information in multiple parts of their brain. And that kinesthetic piece is a really good way to be able to do that because it's a really strong memory for us as humans. Way stronger than auditory or visual memory, just btw. [00:14:40] Speaker B: So we're back to tapping again. [00:14:42] Speaker A: Yep. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Yep. [00:14:43] Speaker A: So when we say tapping, I don't know if every listener out there knows what we're talking about when we're talking about tapping. There are a lot of ways you can do tapping. Really? All that means sometimes I'll do it with a thumb and a finger. Right. Each finger gets a different sound, and I'm having them physically touch their finger to their thumb for every sound. Sometimes we tap on our arm or on our leg or on the table. Some kids stomp their feet for tapping, especially our younger ones. So there's no right or wrong way of doing tapping. [00:15:24] Speaker B: Right. [00:15:25] Speaker A: It's just having a kinesthetic input or a touching input associated with a sound. Or when they're older, a letter or. I'm sorry, when they're older, a syllable or morpheme. [00:15:43] Speaker B: Yep. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Yep. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Manipulatives. I like manipulatives. [00:15:49] Speaker A: So fun. [00:15:50] Speaker B: They're tokens. They're bingo chips. They're blocks. [00:15:54] Speaker A: They're gummy bears. M&Ms. Yes. [00:15:57] Speaker B: Whatever. They can move around. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:59] Speaker B: On the table in front of them. [00:16:02] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. Important side note for practitioners out there. Right. We've all learned the hard way about what we allow out on our table in front of us. Correct. You know, the manipulatives that we use, we're using them for a purpose. So generally, I just give my students, like, a small pile of them, and I don't let them have a whole lot of other things at the same time, or we're losing the effectiveness of the strategy. [00:16:32] Speaker B: Correct. [00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Moving cards around the table. Because, you know, like, we were talking about the visual cards that we use. We can move those around the table. The student can move those around the table. That really helps, too, with just kind of seeing it and being able to touch it. [00:16:52] Speaker A: Yep, yep. You know, we can use those cards to spell different words and have them do that work too. I've done that with, like, magnet letters, too. Same concept. Right. We're just having them move something, touch something, and say it at the same time. Right. The. The point here is we're connecting more than one sense. [00:17:21] Speaker B: Yep. Writing. Same thing with writing. Usually when they're writing, they're also speaking or saying the sound or dividing the syllable for us. So there's definitely both going on at that point. [00:17:38] Speaker A: You know, using a whiteboard or a chalkboard. There are a lot. There actually are some pretty compelling studies to suggest that chalkboards have a lot of benefit for students. I personally really struggle with the chalkboard. They are not my favorite, I find. I find the screechy, scratchy noise they provide to be very grating on my ears. And I also strongly dislike the feel of chalk. [00:18:19] Speaker B: But that's very different for everybody. [00:18:22] Speaker A: That is very different for everybody. So, yes, I will bring out a chalkboard every once in a while if that is a source of my student strength. [00:18:34] Speaker B: Another thing that can go either way is Sandra. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Oh, yes. A Sandra. [00:18:38] Speaker B: Either it's loved. [00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:40] Speaker B: Or not. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Yes. [00:18:42] Speaker B: There's not an in between. [00:18:43] Speaker A: There is not either. My intervention room looks like a beach when a student is done. [00:18:53] Speaker B: That too. [00:18:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that one's fun. And it doesn't have to be sand either. I've used rice, shaving cream. Any kind of tactical way. I mean, what we're doing with a sand tray is we're having students either write a letter, a group of letters, maybe a whole word. Right. We're having them kind of trace something in this. [00:19:19] Speaker B: In the sand as they're saying the word or the letter. [00:19:25] Speaker A: Exactly. Yep. [00:19:27] Speaker B: Tapping on other body parts. Yes. [00:19:31] Speaker A: Yes. So we've talked about that a lot. It does happen a lot. You know, there's a strategy out there of having a student kind of extend their arm and tapping the first sound really up by their shoulder, the middle sound down by their elbow, and the last sound down by their wrist, and then kind of showing that we. We blend through a word. That could be really effective, especially for younger guys. Asking an older student to do that, I would not recommend. [00:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah, skywriting. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah, skywriting. So skywriting would be using two fingers and literally just writing words in the sky as we're saying letters out loud. That can be a fun way to incorporate. Usually, students actually kind of like that. Even my older students don't mind that. You know, there is some research that suggests that's not the most effective. I wouldn't recommend that as the only strategy. Correct. But sometimes for my very resistant students, that is one of the ways that they will start to engage with this kind of work. Often they're really timid to try and actually write something. With a marker or a pen. But they'll engage with that skywriting in the beginning and then I can get them to transition to, okay, now we're going to actually write it and you're actually going to see it at the same time. Obviously the disadvantage to skywriting is we actually can't see what they wrote in the sky because it's imaginary. So that can be a little bit difficult for error correction. [00:21:31] Speaker B: Correct. [00:21:31] Speaker A: Which we know how important error correction is. So I don't love that for the only strategy, but it can be a great way to get started with a student movement. [00:21:48] Speaker B: Yes, Any movement. [00:21:50] Speaker A: Any movement. [00:21:53] Speaker B: They can hop in place while they spell. [00:21:55] Speaker A: Yep. I have known practitioners who have trampolines in their offices and they have students bouncing. That's not for me. [00:22:06] Speaker B: That's not for me. [00:22:07] Speaker A: That's a little too much for me. But things like exercise balls too. I've had students do jumping jacks. I've had where I've taped with like painters tape, elkona boxes on the ground. And I've had students take a walk through a word that can be really effective for our super wiggly, difficult to engage kind of students. That can be a really great way to do it. [00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Tracing. That's pretty self explanatory. [00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Tracing's great. [00:22:59] Speaker B: Love Play doh. Making letters out of Play doh. [00:23:05] Speaker A: Yep. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Writing in Play doh. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Kids love it. [00:23:09] Speaker B: They love it too. [00:23:10] Speaker A: I have been known to use Play DOH with a high school student as a strategy. Have them write in it. Have them even create just little their own little tokens out of it. I've even done it where I have students just pinch a piece of Play DOH for every sound. [00:23:31] Speaker B: Nice. [00:23:32] Speaker A: So it kind of creates like a little fray. [00:23:34] Speaker B: Little cheese outside. That's also good for fine motor activity and some strengthening in your fingers. [00:23:41] Speaker A: Yes. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Which our students sometimes also need anyways. Definitely coloring is something that we use a lot. [00:23:49] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. [00:23:50] Speaker B: Ball tossing. We kind of already talked about that one. [00:23:52] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, catching is not always my strength, but yeah. No, but that's a good one. [00:24:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Shaving cream. Yep. Writing in the shaving cream. Dividing things in the shaving cream. Shaving cream gets everywhere. You know, that's kind of how that works. [00:24:14] Speaker A: That's kind of how that works. Right. I've also done spaghetti noodles. So either cooked spaghetti noodles where they actually bend or not cooked spaghetti and having them kind of break loose little pieces to create letters. Nice. Students really like that. That's. That's a fun way to engage that's just different. Changes it up a little bit. [00:24:42] Speaker B: Yes. Beads. Putting a bead on every time you say a sound or a letter. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Yep. [00:24:51] Speaker B: That's also a really great way to use both. And pipe cleaners, they bend, they twist, they make lots of different shapes. They're kind of fun. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah, they are kind of fun. They really are. [00:25:08] Speaker B: So this is what you. When you see an interventionist is using all these materials or these things are out, and you're trying to wonder why. This is why we use them. Yes. With our students. This is the why of that. Yes. Because places is the ultimate learning tool. [00:25:24] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's been really a pretty fun school year for me, just as a mom, because my daughter, who is in 4k, she will come home and talk all. She will tell me her whole entire day, which is a whole new ball game. My son, no, like, zero details about his day. None. But my daughter will tell us all about the sensory table and she'll tell us all about her little cozy corner. And that's been a fun one as a mom and as a practitioner, because I'm going like, oh, yeah, I know what they're doing there. Right. [00:26:08] Speaker B: You think you're just playing. [00:26:09] Speaker A: You think you're just playing. But, oh, my gosh, the things that you are learning are incredible. [00:26:17] Speaker B: So smell is not one we use that much, but it. Something you could do is you're learning the word watermelon. You have something that smells like watermelon in your room, and as they're spelling it, they're also smelling it. So it's kind of relating back to that smell to kind of relate and make those connections in the brain. [00:26:38] Speaker A: Yep. [00:26:39] Speaker B: Taste. I don't really use that. [00:26:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:43] Speaker B: I don't really know. [00:26:44] Speaker A: No. Other than our students generally get like a snack when they come here. Right. But we're not really learning that. We're not. We're not incorporating that into the learning. [00:26:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not sure you could chew as you. [00:26:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:57] Speaker B: Try to say a sound, because that would be hard. [00:26:59] Speaker A: That would be hard. And, you know, keeping in mind truly, what the Orton Gillingham approach, when they're talking about multi sensory, they really are talking about that visual, kinesthetic and auditory cueing, because those are the three senses that are required for reading and spelling. It is required that in a kinesthetic manner, we are speaking. Right. That's your brain is telling your mouth what to do, telling your voice to turn on or off, all those things. And we must have visual input to read and we must have auditory Input to read. So those, the multi sensory. As far as Orton Gillingham is concerned, that's really what they're, what they're talking about. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Correct. So all these things that we've talked about, you can use these at home? [00:27:56] Speaker A: Yes. [00:27:57] Speaker B: I mean, most people have spaghetti noodles or bees or play DOH or something at home. That will work. [00:28:04] Speaker A: You know, and certainly Nicole and I are not asking parents out there to have full hour intervention sessions with their kids. Most of us, that is not even. I do this for a living and no, I'm not doing that at home. That's not what's going on in my home. But I think it is fun to have parents under, like get an idea of. Oh, yeah, well, we can tap out sounds when we're reading. We can certainly get out some Play doh. And you know, stealthily as we're playing with Play doh. [00:28:44] Speaker B: Oh, what does the letter S say? [00:28:46] Speaker A: Oh, I wonder if we can find the letter S. You know, those kinds of things are really. Research tells us that those kind of incidental moments add up really quickly and do also all add up to that. Right. 20 minutes of spent on reading a day. Right. These activities all would count towards that 20 minutes that research shows has the most effective effect on our reading and spelling abilities. So there's a lot of fun ways. And this is, we could probably talk about this for a lot longer. This is not an exhaustive list, you. [00:29:42] Speaker B: Know, but just so you know, if your child is ever in with an interventionist and you're like, why are they doing jumping Jackie? You know that it's actually, there is actually a reason. [00:29:55] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Just trying to build up those neural connections, folks. [00:30:02] Speaker B: So, Maggie, what's beyond dyslexia? [00:30:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so we are mid January. As we record this last episode, I talked about how our, our routines are just not, not going well. I do think we had some success this morning. Both of my kids were actually dressed at the time that they needed to be dressed for school. So. And we do have, we do have this coming Monday off because it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day as we record this, that's this coming Monday. And I actually think that's going to help, help us kind of get back to one at home. We have a very busy weekend that we will not be home and I will not have the laundry done. I will not have, you know, those things that I know if I don't get done on a weekend, they won't get done. [00:31:02] Speaker B: I know those two. [00:31:03] Speaker A: Yes. So actually looking forward to maybe that'll be a good back to one day. What about you? [00:31:12] Speaker B: Well. Well, it's cold outside. Although today is not as cold. But we're supposed to go into the deep freeze again. And those are the days that I like to curl up with a good book and. Or a blanket with coffee and never leave the house. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Yes. [00:31:26] Speaker B: I'm not really a fan of the real cold. I'm okay with some cold, but when they say negative 20 below or whatever. [00:31:36] Speaker A: Those of us not in the state of Wisconsin are kind of this upper Midwest region. We are supposed to go to like bitterly cold. [00:31:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:31:47] Speaker A: Like, cannot leave our house. Temperatures coming up next week. [00:31:50] Speaker B: So. So that's not really fun for me. [00:31:53] Speaker A: No. And it's also just seems very mean because today is supposed to be nearly 40 degrees. [00:31:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Welcome to Wisconsin. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Just wait. That just seems just kind of. [00:32:03] Speaker B: You just never know what the temperature is. [00:32:04] Speaker A: You just never know. [00:32:08] Speaker B: Well, thank you for listening and if. [00:32:11] Speaker A: You like us, please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic. And be sure to give us a rating and a review on your podcast players. This is how we reach more listeners and we're just really happy to be a part of this community. So thank you, everybody. [00:32:34] Speaker B: Thank you.