Multisensory Teaching System For Reading

Talk; Good Practice - Inf/Junior

Thursday stream 3 Session 09.00 - 11.10 Length 25 minutes

Multisensory Teaching System For Reading

Margaret T. Smith

EDMAR Educational Associates, Texas Mtaysmith@aol.com

Abstract

Many educators and researchers are calling for changes in the way we teach beginning reading in general as well as for improving remedial reading instruction. Multisensory Teaching System for Reading, utilising the same multisensory, structured methods for teaching basic language skills that have proved successful in teaching dyslexics to read, is being incorporated into beginning reading classes (ages 5-8) in some schools in the US. The MTS Reading Program is currently in use in some UK and US schools as tutorials for small groups of at-risk students. Beginning with phoneme awareness activities, lessons progress to teaching explicit, synthesising phonics, syllable types, affixes, and a process for decoding longer words. Teachers with no in-depth knowledge of the structure of the English language are able to implement the program with minimal training. The scripted lessons are very teacher-friendly and can be done in short, 10-30 minute daily sessions. The addition of MTS instruction in mainstream classes has resulted in improved reading skills for all students, and also has proven helpful in the early identification of at-risk students. The session will include an overview of the curriculum and teaching strategies will be explained and demonstrated interactively so that participants will take away immediately applicable skills.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

UNTIL THE LATE 1800's, beginning reading instruction emphasized teaching letter/sound relationships; reading and spelling were taught as related skills. Cursive handwriting was taught to all students.

AROUND THE EARLY 1900'S the emphasis gradually shifted from directly teaching sound/symbol relationships to a whole word approach. A manuscript print form of writing began to be used as the introductory form of handwriting in the early 1940's; cursive handwriting instruction was then deferred for approximately two years.

LATE 1920'S: DR. SAMUEL T. ORTON saw patients unable to read, spell, or write, but could determine no physical cause. Recognizing that the treatment was educational, he prescribed specialized multisensory teaching techniques, and in the 30's, worked closely with a number of educators, including ANNA GILLINGHHAM.

1930'S: ANNA GILLINGHAM had already been using multisensory techniques before she worked with Dr. Orton. She and Bessie Stillman co-authored a teacher manual first published in the early 40's. Miss Gillingham believed that both students and teachers must be taught one-to-one.

1965-75: Under the direction of AYLETT R. COX and DR. LUCIUS WAITES, the staff of the dyslexia child study unit at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, Texas, extended and refined ORTON-GILLINGHAM methodolology into a program known as ALPHABETIC PHONICS. They taught students in small, homogeneous groups of 6-8 students, and also trained teachers in groups.

1978: MARGARET T. SMITH began writing curriculum materials to make it easier to teach ALPHABETIC PHONICS. The materials, called MULTISENSORY TEACHING APPROACH (MTA), were field-tested in a public school setting for nine years. A four year study growing out of the field testing project showed that after receiving MTA instruction, both regular and remedial students in third through sixth grade showed improvement in reading and spelling, some at highly significant levels.

1987: Multisensory Teaching Approach (MTA) was published by Educators Publishing Service. MTA, an integrated language arts program is based on Orton-Gillingham-Stillman and Alphabetic Phonics. Areas of study include alphabet and dictionary skills, reading, handwriting, spelling, comprehension, and composition. MTA, an alternative, ungraded curriculum, has been used successfully in remedial classes for both children and adults. The program includes specific directions for instruction, practice materials (black line duplicating masters and readers), and criterion-referenced post-tests.

1994: MULTISENSORY TEACHING SYSTEM (MTS) READING PROGRAM was published by MARGARET T. SMITH. MTS follows the same curriculum as MTA, and is written in teacher-friendly minilessons making it easier to teach. MTS has been taught in K-2 grades in addition to other reading programs, in chapter remedial reading for students with less serious reading problems, and in adult literacy classes.

MTS IS EFFECTIVE

Reports of Results: Formal

Clark, D. and Uhry, J. Dyslexia: Theory & practice of remedial instruction. Second Edition. 1995. York Press: Baltimore, Maryland Cites several studies of MTA reading proving the effectiveness of the reading program. Results can also be applicable to MTS as the MTS reading is based on MTA reading.

Johnson, M., Bryan, K., Phillips, S., and Peer, L. Report to DfEE: "Effective Mainstream Identification and Intervention Strategies for Pupils at Risk of Developing Mild to Moderate Literacy Difficulties"

Effects of MTS instruction on 3rd grade Texas Reading Test between two schools in Harlandale School District.

Harlandale is located in San Antonio, Texas. The schools had the same kind of population: low socioeconomic and a very high percentage of Lack of English Proficiency students
Low Compliance School: Provided none to minimal MTS instruction
High Compliance School: Provided the recommended amount of MTS instruction

Approximately 18 months after MTS implementation began in K-3rd grades (Spring of 1998) the High Compliance School greatly outperformed the Low Compliance School in the percentage of students passing third grade Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) Reading:

	Prior to MTS implementation	18 months after MTS implementation
Low Compliance School TAAS Reading	60%	49.3% of students passed
High Compliance School TAAS Reading	60.6%	72.9% of students passed

Prior to MTS implementation 18 months after MTS implementation Low Compliance School TAAS Reading 60% 49.3% of students passed High Compliance School TAAS Reading 60.6% 72.9% of students passed

The third grade students in the Spring of 1998 had actually received only a month or so of MTS instruction as first graders, one year of MTS instruction as second graders, and approximately 7 months of MTS instruction as third graders. None of the students had completed the curriculum. The trend in this study indicates that even better results can be obtained when MTS instruction begins in Preschool (Age 4) and/or Kindergarten (age 5) and continues through first, second, and third grades, or until students have completed the curriculum.

Reports of Results: Informal

MTA FOR REMEDIATION

Sally and Elfi, Denison School District: "Elfi and I would like to thank you for making MTA available to our students. The week of Thanksgiving, one of Elfi's 4th grade students read his first book. I am seeing progress with a 7th grade non-reader-you can imagine the thrill! This is the first time we have seen an opportunity for our non-readers to become readers. What better time than the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays to express our gratitude to you. Thanks again."

MTS for FOR PREVENTION

ARP School District: "We introduced MTS/MTA into our elementary (K-6 grades) school last year at all levels. Our elementary school won the Governor's Successful School Award for significant increase in basic test scores."

"Now I know that reading is something you can learn how to do, it's not something that just happens."

Trevor, Second Grade Student, Manchester, England after 8 weeks of MTS instruction

FACTORS INVOLVED IN TEACHING READING

A Reading Model: Stages of Reading Development (Jeanne Chall 1983)

Learning to Read Stages: Stage 1: Decoding and Stage 2: Fluency
Reading to Learn Stages 3, 4, 5. Using reading to gain world knowledge

Benjamin Bloom on the role of automaticity in learning: "The mastery of any skill--whether a routine daily task or a highly refined talent--depends on the ability to perform it unconsciously with speed and accuracy while consciously carrying on other brain functions."

The Learners

Barbara Bateman: Learners vary in their ability to remember printed words: 15-50 exposures; 50-500 exposures; 500-1500 or more exposures

Some learners have difficulty learning to read in spite of average to superior intelligence.

Torgeson: The presence of risk characteristics are apparent in kindergarten and grade 1. The stability in reading status from Grade 1 through Grade 5 is predictable based on kindergarten performance.

Juel: 87% of students who were good readers in G1 were also good readers in G4. Foorman and Associates:
Reading problems occur primarily at the level of the single word.
Decoding problems in reading are primarily associated with problems segmenting words and syllables into phonemes. This is true in virtually all poor readers, including children, adolescents, and adults, at all levels of IQ and socioeconomic levels.

80% of all children identified as LD are reading-impaired; 90% of these have problems with decoding skills. .

Children do not outgrow reading problems. 74% of children identified as disabled readers in Grade 3 remained disabled in 9th grade.

Slow, inaccurate decoding is the best predictor of poor reading comprehension. Even for readers without difficulties, comprehension depends on rate and accuracy of decoding.

Social/disadvantage/cultural influences (print exposure, parental literacy, lap time reading to the child) is overestimated because intervention studies are remarkably successful with these populations.

The skills that lead to good reading can be taught early in school: K-2.

The Language

650,000 words and still growing
85% of 17000 most frequently used words are 85% phonetically regular.

What We Must Teach: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Learning to Read: Dr. Barbara Foorman

5. Comprehension monitoring strategies Strategies that help students attend to and remember what they read

4. Orthographic awareness Spelling patterns, orthographic rules, inflectional and derivational morphology, etymology

3. Alphabetic principle Insight that written words are composed of letters of the alphabet that are intentionally and conventionally related to sound segments (phonemes) of spoken words

2. Phonemic awareness The ability to deal explicitly and manipulate sound units smaller than the syllable, i. e., phonemes

1. Phonological awareness Sensitivity to the sound structure (rather than the meaning) of speech, i. e., alliteration, rhyming words

The Task: How Do We Teach the Language as It Is to the Learners as They Are? Explicit synthetic phonics

Direct instruction in decoding skills emphasizing the alphabetic code results in more favorable outcomes than does a context-emphasis or embedded (never isolate the sound; teach only in context) phonics approach. In some studies, students receiving context-emphasis instruction made no gains whatever (Foorman)
Comparisons of direct instruction phonics, embedded phonics, and context-emphasis approaches showed that only direct instruction approach was associated with average levels of reading proficiency. Direct instruction phonics must be continued into subsequent school years. (Foorman)
Classroom level reading intervention that provides explicit instruction in phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle as part of a balanced approach to reading is clearly effective. (Foorman)
A problem with implicit phonics is that many children fail to induce the sounds because they are unable to segment a word into distinctive sounds. (Beck & Juel) Multisensory and guided discovery teaching techniques Information presented in explicit, sequential, systematic manner Teach a process: The major tools we can give children are ones that allow them to decode printed words for themselves (Beck & Juel)

ABOUT MTS

< MTS addresses the phonological and phoneme awareness and direct decoding instruction components required in Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English language arts.
< Phonics alone is not enough. MTS addresses four of five necessary and sufficient conditions for learning to read as defined by Barbara Foorman: Phonological awareness, phoneme awareness, alphabetic principle, orthographic awareness. These four conditions plus comprehension instruction provide for a balanced reading program.
< MTS is not intended to be a comprehensive reading program: it is the direct instruction component for teaching phonological awareness, the alphabetic code and the structure of the language. It is intended as a failure prevention program.
< MTS only requires 15 to 30 instructional minutes a day.
< Based on results of a comparative study of MTS and two other structured, multi-sensory programs, MTS is now being implemented in some schools in England.
< MTS instruction empowers students to become independent readers by teaching them the structure of the written language and processes for accessing unknown words independently. MTS instruction is a diagnostic teaching tool. Teacher observations of students' reaction to MTS instruction helps them separate students at risk for dyslexia from those who simply need more explicit instruction or a little more practice.

MTA and MTS READING CONCEPTS: A PARTIAL SUMMARY

Margaret Taylor Smith
PO Box 2, Forney, Texas, 75126, USA
Phone 972-564-5005 Fax 972-564-6606 Email mtaysmith@msn.com

DEFINITIONS

Guided discovery: A process for introducing new learning; teachers set up a learning situation by reading and/or writing a list of words on the board, then asking leading questions that will enable students to discover the new concept independently. The questioning technique engages students actively in the learning process, and helps them develop high level thinking skills.

Multisensory teaching means to present information through two or more learning pathways, simultaneously, if possible.

Voiced speech sounds cause the vocal cords to vibrate; speech sounds that do not cause the vocal cords to vibrate are called unvoiced sounds.

Vowel sounds cause the mouth to open; vowel sounds are also voiced.

Consonant sounds are usually blocked or partly blocked by the teeth, tongue, or lips, closing or partially closing off the air coming from the mouth.

Consonant sounds can be voiced or unvoiced.

A syllable is a word or part of a word formed by one opening of the mouth. A syllable usually has at least one vowel sound.

When a word or syllable is accented, the mouth opens wider and the voice is louder and higher.

A digraph is two letters in the same syllable that represent only one sound. ai, ay, au, aw, ea, ee, ei, eu, ey, ie, oa, oe, oo, ow, ue, ck, ch, ng, ph, sh, th
A trigraph is three letters in the same syllable that represent only one sound. igh: light; dge: badge; tch: witch
A quadrigraph is four letters in the same syllable that represent only one sound: eigh as in neighbor, eight
A diphthong (dif'thong) is two vowels blended together in the same syllable: oi, oy (coil, boy) and ou, ow (out, cow)

VOWEL SITUATIONS

Pronunciation of vowels is dependent upon the situation of the vowel in a syllable and whether the syllable is accented or not.
A closed syllable ends with at least one consonant.
The vowel in a closed syllable is short. it nap'kin An open syllable ends with a vowel.
The vowel in an open, accented syllable is long. pi'lot
The vowel in a vowel-consonant-silent e syllable is long. cake, athlete, five, rope, cube,
The vowel i is short in an open, unaccented syllable. di vide'
The vowel a in an open, unaccented syllable is pronounced ( u ): ca det'

CONSONANT SITUATIONS

Most consonant letters regularly represent only one sound, as, b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, p, q, r, t, v, w, x, z. A few represent more than one sound, as, c, g, n. Pronunciation is determine by adjacent letters and/or location in a word or syllable.

Initial or medial c is pronounced (k) before a, o, u, or any consonant. Final c is pronounced (k). Initial or medial c is pronounced (s) before e, i, or y. Initial or medial g is pronounced (g) before a, o, u, or any consonant. gab, goat, gum, glad . Final g is pronounced (g) Initial or medial g is pronounced (j) before e, i, or y. gem, agile, gypsy Initial, medial, or final n is pronounced (n). Medial n before any spelling of (k) or (g) sounds is pronounced (ng). sink, uncle, anger, jonquil

FINAL STABLE SYLLABLES

Many English words have stable, non-phonetic word endings. These syllables are rarely accented. Some of these final syllables are listed below. ble, cle, dle, fle, gle, kle, ple, tle, zle: bubble, candle, uncle, handle, ruffle, wiggle, ankle, apple, mantle, dazzle tion pronounced (shun): action; sion pronounced (shun) and (zhun): mansion, version The syllable immediately before final stable syllables tion or sion is accented in longer words.

SYLLABLE DIVISION PATTERNS FOR TWO SYLLABLE BASE WORDS

VC'|CV- VC|CV': When two consonants stand between two sounded vowels, the word usually divides between the consonants, and the accent most often falls on the first syllable, but it can fall on the last syllable. (nap'kin, com pel')
V'|CV, VC'|V, V|CV': When one consonant stands between two sounded vowels, the most frequent division is before the consonant, with the accent on the first syllable (tu'lip); the next most frequent division is after the consonant with the accent on the first syllable (rob'in); the third most frequent division is before the consonant with the accent on the last syllable (re peat', di van', ca nal') .
VC|CCV; VCC'CV: When three consonants stand between two sounded vowels the word usually divides between the second and third consonants (con'tract), but sometimes divides between the third and fourth consonants (pump'kin) Accent can be on the first or the last syllable.
V'|V-V|V': Two adjacent vowels can be a digraph [boat] or a diphthong [out], but sometimes the word divides between the vowels (po'em, du et'). Accent can be on the first or the last syllable.

PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES

Common prefixes and suffixes are taught throughout the curriculum.

INTRODUCING GRAPHEMES (LETTERS OR LETTER CLUSTERS)

NOTE: Phoneme awareness training should precede instruction in letter/sound correspondences.

A guided discovery process utilizing multisensory techniques is recommended for teaching letter/sound correspondences.

MATERIALS: a pocket mirror for each student; for the teacher, a card with the letter on it, and one with a key word picture and letter on it.

Dictate a list of words to students (one at a time) with the sound to be studied in the same position in each word. Ask them to repeat each word, watching their mouth in the mirror. After all words have been dictated, ask students to identify the sound that is the same in all of the words. After students have identified the sound, ask them to determine whether it is a vowel or a consonant sound, and whether it is voiced or unvoiced. Show the letter card with the letter representing the sound, then give a riddle for the student to guess the key word. After students guess the key word, show the card with the key word picture and letter on it.

Review the cards daily, after they have been introduced. Add new cards as other graphemes are introduced. Review procedure: Show the accumulated letter cards and ask students to name the letters. Show the accumulated key word picture cards and ask students to give the key word and sound.

Students should have daily reading practice with words that contain previously taught letters.