Using the Multisensory approach to teach students with Dyslexia

Abstract

Dyslexia is a severe learning difficulty meeting many children in today's educational system. Meeting all of the individual needs of all children is difficult, as any educator today knows. That task is made even more complicated when the child has a diagnosed learning difficulty such as dyslexia. Unfortunately, it appears that there is no known medical care to alleviating the cognitive processing difficulties presented with dyslexia. Therefore, educators must use effective teaching strategies for children with dyslexia to help them become successful in an academic environment (Rupley & Blair,1983). One of the primary adjustments that must be made is how dyslexic children are taught to read and write. Dyslexic children need a different approach to learning language from that employed in most classrooms. They need to be taught, slowly and ultimately, the essential elements of their language - the sounds and letters representing them - and how to put these together and take them apart. They have to use lots of practice in having their writing hands, eyes, ears, and voices working together for the aware organization and conservation of their learning. Current research converges on the efficacy of explicit, structured language teaching for children with dyslexia. Multisensory teaching is simultaneously visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile to strengthen memory and learning. Therefore, being taught by a multisensory approach, children have the advantage of learning alphabetic patterns and words by utilizing all their senses. This paper will provide an overview of the problems faced by dyslexic children and how teachers using a multisensory approach can modify their instruction to accommodate these difficulties.