Photo By:  Olena Vasylieva on iStock

Studies from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development have shown that using multisensory techniques is the most effective teaching approach for children who struggle with reading. These techniques are teaching strategies that engage multiple senses simultaneously. By using sight, hearing, movement, and touch, they give struggling readers more than one way to connect with material. Here are a few examples of multisensory techniques and how they work: 

• Sand or shaving cream writing allows the student to use sight, touch, and sound to connect letters and their sounds. Starting with a handful of sand or a dollop of shaving cream, students use their fingers to write a word while sounding out each letter. Once complete, they blend the sounds together to read the entire word aloud.  
• Made with colored craft or popsicle sticks and written or printed questions, story sticks help those who struggle with reading comprehension visualize the various elements of a story. Each element of the story is represented by a different color, on a separate stick. One stick might ask, “What is the setting?” while another will say, “Who are the characters?” The sticks can be used while reading to identify the elements as the story goes on, or the reader can be asked to highlight or underline the elements of a printed story using highlighters or pens that coordinate with the sticks.  
• Shared reading can be done in a group as one person reads aloud while everyone follows along on printed material, or it can be done individually with audio books. This allows the reader to see the words while hearing them aloud. Printed versions also allow space for writing sight words and drawing pictures.  

Turning Pages offers one-on-one reading tutoring for both children and adults using methods like these as well as other techniques. To learn more, give us a call at (616) 243-7323 or visit us online.