Didactic Multisensory Materials

The work of the psychologist Dr. Rachel Pinney illustrated that learning was more successful with positive interactions than corrective feedback. During her life Dr.Pinney cited many outstanding real life illustrations that supported this theory:-

For example one family had two sons with a large age difference. The eldest son was very keen on playing chess and his parents encouraged this skill with extra lessons from skilled chess players. This son regularly competed successfully in chess tournaments against much older contestants.
The younger son was keen to join in this family interest but he was so young that no-one bothered to teach him the complexities of the game; they just let him join in with his pretend play. The older brother used his younger brother’s enthusiastic random and often incorrect moves as a challenging opportunity to practice his advanced skills.

The family travelled extensively to meet the older brothers growing levels of competitive success. The young brother spent a great deal of free time hanging out at the tournaments; his interest and chess playing skills also developed progressively, but his parents were completely focused on the older brothers outstanding levels of competitive success.

The end of this real life story was that the younger brother began to match and sometimes win games with his older brother and his chess playing friends. The younger brother started to beat his older brother and others at the tournaments. Ultimately this young man became one of the youngest world class chess players. A chess master told his family, after competing with their youngest son, that he used strategies that the world champion had never seen or used in his own games. The youngest son went on to successfully competed in world class chess tournaments against champions from all over the world. Whether this young man ever had any chess lessons the author did not find out from Rachel who knew the family personally. Rachel also travelled all over the world teaching people how to facilitate Child-Directed Learning. Rachel also pioneered Special Time and Creative Listening techniques. On several occasions she was requested to mediate at important discussions related to world peace negotiations.
 
Didactic means that the materials are specifically designed to teach basic skills and foundations for successful learning.
The teaching benefits offered by multi sensory didactic materials can be helpful to a wide age range, a broad spectrum of ability and interest.
When multisensory materials are carefully designed they can intrinsically meet different styles of learning, different levels of skill, and sensory perceptual differences. The quality of independent child-directed learning supported by multisensory teaching materials may be influenced by an integration of the following factors:
1. A comprehensive integration of the human sensory spectrum
2. Physical movement and associated co-ordinated actions.
3. Supporting themes of associated conceptual understanding.
4. Incorporated strategies that help attention, reception and recall (memory skills and strategies).
5. A focus on personal motivation and participation.
6. Activity that promote meaningful challenges of enquiry, exploration and discovery.
7. A format that promotes a correct initial learning experience.
8. Intrinsic opportunities for correction of error.
9. Expansion into further associated creative activity.
If multisensory materials meet the points listed above then the learner could gain a more holistic experience that can be actively adapted to meet the individual’s needs and preferred style of learning. Scaffolding can meet the learner with a broad multisensory presentation and subsequently adult facilitators may be less held within their own dependence upon sensory strengths, personal learning style and interests. Thus, the learner can be less dependent upon adult support and the confinement of learning from another person’s sensory preferences and style of learning.
The following game designed by the author is an example of how the above can be related to a specific activity.
Materials – a set of picture cards that represent rhyming pairs of words e.g.
Cat-hat; mat – bat; sheet – feet; tree – three; bin – tin; red – bed; sock – clock; moon – spoon.
This game gives the option to visually match the letter pattern with the rhyming picture and thereby uses the rhyming association as a clue to reading the (picture-less) word cards. This enables a less skilled reader to discover what the word cards say. The missing letter on the second word can be discovered on the reverse of each picture. This initial letter can also help the player to identify the correct name for the picture.

The game above encourages the following interactive participation:-
1. Accurate recognition of artistic visual pictures representing real objects.
2. Auditory identification of visual pictures and rhyming words.
3. Kinaesthetic movements and pronunciation of rhyming words.
4. Identification of initial letter sounds and their respective letter shapes.
5. Search for specific vocabulary related to rhyming words, i.e. Mug not cup, to match rug not carpet.
6. Specified and logical strategies related to moving the cards into rhyming pairs and subsequent word building.
7. Visual picture and word matching needed for control of error using the answer cards.
Within this game the participant is challenged to meaningfully integrate discovery as an aid to memory and recall of spellings,utilising different areas of brain activity, coordinated fine motor control, identification of rhyming sounds and correct spelling for the rhyming words.