It is a priority of Sarasota County Schools that we provide excellent reading instruction for all learners. High quality reading instruction and/or interventions should be explicit, systematic, sequential, and multi-sensory. This website provides instructional strategies and resources to support teachers and parents with implementing multi-sensory strategies in their instruction and/or interventions with students.
Principles of Effective Multi-Sensory Instruction
The combination of the following will facilitate students' ability to learn and recall information:
Simultaneous employment of visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile link-ages
Systematic and cumulative organization of content
Direct, teacher-led instruction
Diagnostic teaching to mastery
Synthetic and analytic presentation
Comprehensive and inclusive approach
Multi-Sensory Instruction
Students learn most effectively when information comes in through many sensory channels simultaneously. This is often referred to as multisensory instruction.
Multisensory teaching links listening, speaking, reading and writing through the simultaneous and alternative deployment of visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile sensory modalities. Teachers should ensure that students are seeing, saying, hearing and manipulating materials during learning time.
Students learn more effectively if multisensory approaches are used for mastering and assimilating teaching that combines encoding (spelling) and decoding (reading), as these processes are inter-linked.