3rd(1d) Discovery learning with Didactic Multisensory Materials

An Introduction to Didactic Support for Literacy Foundations

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, and 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 the 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 and future intellectual development.

If multisensory materials meet the points listed above then the learner may gain a holistic experience that can be adapted to meet the individual needs and preferred style of learning. Scaffolding can meet the learner with a broad multisensory presentation and subsequently adult facilitation may be free from personal sensory strengths, learning preferences and interests. Thus, the learner can be less dependent upon adult support and the confinement of learning from another person’s perspective.

In the Eastwood Education colour coded alphabet the colour of the letter indicates it’s phonic representation in the word. For example the grey letters are those that are present in words where they are silent and do not indicate any spoken (phonic) sound:-

Multi-sensory learning materials can offer a broad and solid foundation for learning that may be especially supportive to additional areas of associated learning. Similarly well designed multi-sensory learning materials can also facilitate future expansion into further areas of new learning.

However, unstructured multi-sensory or imaginative presentation can be very confusing. The level of potential for confusion and adverse learning experience is shown in the illustrations below taken from a children’s alphabet book: ‘ALPHABATICS’ by S. MacDonald. This book creatively presents acrobatic letter movements of up to 360 degrees rotation. The picture below shows the capital letter A turned upside down to form the picture and associated visual perceptual skills. The resulting picture then relates to the initial sound of ‘ar’ for ark rather than an initial vowel sound of the short vowel ‘a’ as in apple or the long vowel ‘a’ as in apron.

The G has turned 90 degrees and then the perceptual skill is one of focusing on the enclosed yellow space instead of red letter G. Finally the initial letter sound is J rather than G.
Here the lower case script is chosen rather than the capital and then it is turned upside down to produce the associated picture.

Even more interestingly ! When this book reaches the letter ‘n’ the letter is turned upside in to a ‘u’ to create a picture of a nest and then the opposite happens when the ‘u’ is turned upside down into an umbrella.

In contrast the same book addressed the letter ‘S’ as a swimming swan which works very well unless the orietational actobatics presented in the book encourage a child to fail to address the conventional left – right direction and the letter s is drawn swimming in a right to left direction.

This book presents very interesting and adventurous visual pictorial presentations that may provide challenges to those that are competent with printed text but to those who are at the initial learning stages this book could create future areas of confusion and lack of conceptual understanding about the importance of letter orientation when learning to read and write.

The quality of independent child-directed learning supported by multisensory teaching materials may be influenced by factors presented in the list presented 1-9 above. Failure to meet all the aspects described in the list could change the learning materials from helpful to confusing. Thus multi-sensory experience is not in itself going to improve the quality of learning. The quality of learning is directed by how the design meets all sensory and conceptual information as related to initial foundation learning and future extended learning. The above list presents nine key areas of consideration that need to be considered carefully when designing multi-sensory materials.

An important aspect of multi-sensory learning is facilitated by an initial period of free exploration of the materials. This opportunity for free play should also allow the explorer to engage in creative expression, social interaction, and physical skills. After an initial period of free exploration has been voluntarily completed, the explorer can be encouraged to begin a focused journey of activity towards an acknowledged conclusion.

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:

10. A comprehensive integration of the human sensory spectrum
11. Physical movement and associated co-ordinated actions.
12. Supporting themes of associated conceptual understanding.
13. Incorporated strategies that help attention, reception and recall (memory skills and strategies).
14. A focus on personal motivation and participation.
15. Activity that promote meaningful challenges of enquiry, exploration and discovery.
16. A format that promotes a correct initial learning experience.
17. Intrinsic opportunities for correction of error.
18. 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.

A Rhyming Word Game

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. It is important that each pair of rhyming pictures represent words that have the same spelling pattern.

[This rhyming activity does not have a self correction if the words that rhyme are not spell with a similar spelling pattern e.g. Horse and sauce, petal and kettle have rhyming phonic sounds but the spelling pattern is very different. Thus if a child is initially looking for words with a similar pattern of letters at the end of the word as a means of helping his ability to find the correct rhyming cards he will fail when he gets to those with alternative spelling patterns; this may cause confusion and initiate incorrect learning.]

Matching letter patterns on the word cards for each of the two rhyming pictures helps the less able reader to discover what the word cards say if he finds a word difficult to read. Thus the missing initial letter/s on the second word card can be discovered on the labelled pictures which also encourages children to address discovery as an aid to memory and recall of spellings.

One picture of each rhyming set has a word card to be placed with the picture. On the back of the picture cards is the initial letter or consonants. This enables a less skilled reader to discover what the word cards say by matching it to the picture with the right initial letters on the back. One of each set of rhyming pictures is still left without a corresponding word card. 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.

All the second rhyming pictures are built matching words using a set of corresponding initial letter and letter blend cards. The initial letter cads are placed appropriately over the beginning of the first rhyming word card, to change the word to match the second picture. When all second rhyming pictures have been paired with the new words another set of word cards are presented face down. These are the same as the original word cards. This second set of word cards is then turned over one at a time and placed below their matching pictures. Now the pictures that gave their cards to be used to build a word for their rhyming picture get another word card and all the pictures have a corresponding word card at the end of the game. The game can beginning with guessing what word each picture represents. If players call the picture by a name that is not correct for the paired rhyming activity then I say “yes, this could be called a picture of a flower but for this game I did not call it a flower. What other word could be put with this picture. If the players cannot identify a picture with the right word I might say in this game the picture is called a rose. Getting the pictures correctly identified before doing the rhyming picture task can help for young players. However, players can correct a wrong description when they get clues form the other pictures. For example if there is a picture of a hose the flower picture needs to be called a rose.