ns (Hall, Oyer & Haas, 1999).
How does multisensory teaching work to improve the reading and spelling skills of learning disabled students? According to Birsh (1999), multisensory theory holds that by simultaneously stimulating auditory, visual and kinesthetic pathways, instruction mimics a more natural way of learning and thinking and thus works to enhance memory and learning for students who are learning disabled. However, Birsh also notes that there is no "silver bullet" for learning disabilities and that it can take anywhere from one to three years of intense instruction (depending upon students' level of learning disability and individual strengths and weaknesses) before students show strong improvements. Nonetheless, in multisensory learning, links are consistently made between the visual (what we see), auditory (what we hear), and kinesthetic-tactile (what we feel) pathways, and the student has the advantage of using all of these to promote learning.
Types of Multisensory Instruction Used With Learning Disabled Students
There are many multisensory approaches for teaching reading and spelling to learning disabled students, however as noted by McIntyre and Pickering (1995) most of them are a variation of the original Orton-Gillingham method which is based on a technique of studying and teaching language, understanding the nature of human language, the mechanisms involved in learning, and the language-learning processes in individuals. The approach is based on the constant use of how a letter or word looks, how it sounds, and how the speech organs or the hand in writing feels when producing it.
One variation directly evolved from the Orton-Gillingham method is Alphabetic Phonics. According to Ediger (2000), this approach uses auditory, visual and kinesthetic modalities in all language arts instruction. The Association Method is another multisensory, phonetically-based, systematic and incremental method of instructio...