For people of all ages, reading can be an enjoyable, rewarding hobby. From a young age, children are encouraged to develop a positive relationship with reading, but for beginning and struggling readers, this task does not come with the same level of enjoyment as it does for those who view it as a hobby. Rather, it is often thought of as a chore. With the use of multisensory reading strategies, beginning and struggling readers develop necessary reading skills while using multiple learning modalities to build connections. Not only is this approach effective, but it is also very engaging and FUN!
What are multisensory reading strategies?
Multisensory reading is a fabulous way for beginning and struggling readers to develop literacy skills. Reading Rockets explains that this approach can, “improve phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension skills. Multi-sensory instruction combines listening, speaking, reading, and a tactile or kinesthetic activity”. These activities are a great way to build skills and can slowly be reduced as your child increases their reading proficiency. Eventually your child will be able to read words without relying on multisensory activities.
TPR
TPR, or Total Physical Response, is a great way to connect words with specific movements. This can be a useful support if your child is struggling with specific high frequency words (these could be called a number of different things such as heart words, sight words, ‘just know it’ words, or even trick words). One example is the word “said”. This can be a tricky word for children to remember as it does not follow a specific spelling pattern. When saying the word “said”, have your child move their hand from their mouth outward. You can also use movements as a way to connect letters to sounds like in this video!
Tap and blend
The Tap and Blend strategy is a great way for students to segment and blend sounds out loud, or even write words! To read aloud, have students say the word aloud. Then, have them tap a finger for each individual sound they hear in the word and drag their thumb across to blend the words together. One example is with the word “box.” Your child will say /b/ as they tap their pointer finger to their thumb, /o/ as they tap their middle finger to their thumb, and /x/ as they tap their ring finger to their thumb. Then they will use their thumb to slide across these sounds as they blend the word together.
Stamps
Letter stamps, magnet letters, and kinetic sand can be used to help support your child’s letter-sound correspondence when learning to read. This is a great opportunity to practice spelling and reading words. An example could look like, “Stamp the letters b-a-t. What word does that spell?” Students could also use this strategy in combination with elkonin boxes or word ladders to segment and spell words.
Elkonin Boxes
This resource can be used in a very similar way to the Tap and Blend strategy. Each box represents an individual sound in a word. You can use different items and letters to represent sounds which can make learning so much fun! We Are Teachers includes more examples and ideas, including a free printable.
decodable words or word families
When reading short vowel or high frequency word passages that focus on a specific spelling pattern/word family, you can ask your child to underline all of the words that belong in the pattern. This can bring extra attention to the pattern and boost their memory skills by giving them a reading cue to sound out the word.
Picture cues
Picture cues or cards can be used to help your child associate a picture with each letter that matches the beginning sound for that letter. This is a great resource to use when your child gets stuck on a letter sound, to gain alphabet awareness, or to help with letter sound fluency.
Reading can be a tricky task when children lack resources or strategies to help. When incorporating movement and multisensory strategies, children have the opportunity to connect reading to real-life experiences and enhance their learning practice!
Written by Ami Z.