Ensory a Teacher’S Learning Guide to Multi Sensory LEARNING Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses
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Education A Teacher’s Guide to multisensory Guide to Multi A Teacher’s LEARNING Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses ow can teachers help students develop the literacy skills that are H necessary for learning and retaining information in any subject? Traditional memory tricks, mnemonic devices, graphic organizers, and A Teacher’s Guide to role-playing do little to turn bored or reluctant students into enthusiastic learners. In A Teacher's Guide to Multisensory Learning: Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses, Lawrence Baines shows teachers how to engage students through hands-on, visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli and link the activities sensory multisensory to relevant academic objectives. Throughout the book, you’ll find real classroom examples of how teachers use multisensory learning techniques to help students interact with material more intensely and retain what they learn for longer periods of time. Baines provides a wide variety of engaging Learning lesson plans to keep students motivated, such as LEARNING • Scent of my Soul—helps students learn expository writing through a Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses series of sensory lessons and encourages them to investigate a subject of infinite interest—themselves! • Between the Ears—develops students’ ability to infer and deduce by working with their own drawings • Film Score—teaches the art of persuasive writing through the emotional appeal of music • Adagio Suite—encourages students to expand their critical thinking through sight, sound, and touch Seventeen additional lessons plans from Baines and experts in the field are complemented with practical assessments and strategies for engaging students’ sense of play. Baines For teachers who are ready to energize their classrooms, this book is an invaluable resource for expanding students' capacity to learn and helping them cultivate essential skills that will last a lifetime. $27.95 U.S. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Alexandria, Virginia USA Lawrence Baines BROWSE EXCERPTS FROM ASCD BOOKS: http://www.ascd.org/books multisensoryA Teacher’s Guide To LEARNING Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses multisensoryA Teacher’s Guide To LEARNING Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses Lawrence Baines Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Alexandria, Virginia USA ® Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development 1703 N. Beauregard St. • Alexandria, VA 22311-1714 USA Phone: 800-933-2723 or 703-578-9600 • Fax: 703-575-5400 Web site: www.ascd.org • E-mail: [email protected] Author guidelines: www.ascd.org/write Gene R. Carter, Executive Director; Nancy Modrak, Publisher; Julie Houtz, Director of Book Editing & Production; Leah Lakins, Project Manager; Cathy Guyer, Senior Graphic Designer; BMWW, Typesetter; Sarah Plumb, Production Specialist; Mike Kaylan, Production Manager Copyright © 2008 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from ASCD. Read- ers who wish to duplicate material copyrighted by ASCD may do so for a small fee by contacting the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 222 Rosewood Dr., Danvers, MA 01923, USA (phone: 978-750-8400; fax: 978-646-8600; Web: www.copyright.com). For requests to reprint rather than photocopy, contact ASCD’s permissions offi ce: 703-575-5749 or per- [email protected]. Translation inquiries: [email protected]. Printed in the United States of America. Cover art copyright © 2008 by ASCD. ASCD pub- lications present a variety of viewpoints. The views expressed or implied in this book should not be interpreted as offi cial positions of the Association. All Web links in this book are correct as of the publication date below but may have become inactive or otherwise modified since that time. If you notice a deactivated or changed link, please e-mail [email protected] with the words “Link Update” in the subject line. In your message, please specify the Web link, the book title, and the page number on which the link appears. PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-4166-0713-7 • ASCD product #108009 • n10/08 Also available as an e-book through ebrary, netLibrary, and many online booksellers (see Books in Print for the ISBNs). Quantity discounts for the paperback edition only: 10–49 copies, 10%; 50+ copies, 15%; for 1,000 or more copies, call 800-933-2723, ext. 5634, or 703-575-5634. For desk copies: [email protected]. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baines, Lawrence. A teacher’s guide to multisensory learning : improving literacy by engaging the senses / Lawrence Baines. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4166-0713-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Language arts. 2. Perceptual learning. 3. Teaching—Aids and devices. I. Title. LB1576.B245 2008 371.3--dc22 2008021542 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 A Teacher’s Guide to Multisensory LEARNING Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses Acknowledgments . .vii Introduction . ix 1. Literacy and Academic Standards . .1 2. Multisensory Learning, Engagement, and Achievement . .13 3. Sight . .25 4. Sound . .54 5. Smell and Taste . .88 6. Movement and Touch . .120 7. Sense of Play . .145 Appendix A: Standards for the English Language Arts . .175 Appendix B: Candy Freak Sensory Words . .177 Appendix C: Color Plates . .182 References . .189 Index . .201 About the Author . .208 To Judith Daso Herb, a woman of vision and compassion Acknowledgments I extend my thanks to the many people whose contributions enriched this book: For their work in Chapter 3, David James Poissant of Tucson, Arizona; Mike Angelotti of Norman, Oklahoma; and Debra Winston of Carbondale, Colorado. For their work in Chapter 4, Chris Goering of the University of Arkansas; and Mark Rabbit and Rob Deckard of Toledo, Ohio. For their work in Chapter 6, Lesley Kahle of Tampa, Florida; Rob- ert Masters III of Temperance, Michigan; and Matt Copeland of Topeka, Kansas. For their work in Chapter 7, Pamela Sissi Carroll of Tallahassee, Florida; and Michael W. Kibby, William J. Rapaport, Karen M. Wieland, and Debra A. Dechert of Buffalo, New York. I’m grateful to Berenice Felix- Diaz of Irving, Texas, for sharing a beautiful quotation from one of her young students. Special thanks to David Pyles and Lori Keleman, who over a period of three-and-a-half years helped me gather enough books and articles to fill 16 filing cabinets; 34 cardboard boxes; all the drawers of my massive, clunky desk; and half the floor of my office. Thanks to Mom, Dad, and my wife Coleen for help with editing and for dispensing much-needed warm fuzzies. vii Introduction Yo puedo oler el perfume de las fl ores que planta cada año mi Tía Maria. Leyendo bajo los árboles un libro perfecto a mi prim- ita, me siento mágica. Jugando y disfrutando con mi prima junto al aire fresco de otoño, yo pienso, “Que rico el aire que salpica en mi cara.” Después de que me canso de jugar siento al misma vez paz y sueno. I can smell the perfume of the fl owers planted each year by Aunt Maria. Reading a perfect book to my little cousin under the arbor, I feel the magic. Playing together with my cousin in the outdoors, I think, “The rich air sprinkles in my face.” In time, I tire of play- ing, but I feel the peace nevertheless. —3rd grade student of Berenice Felix-Diaz, Irving, Texas ix x A Teacher’s Guide to Multisensory Learning Two of the greatest challenges for teachers in the years ahead will be student engagement and achievement. Multisensory learning techniques provide an effective, highly adaptable method for addressing both. The premise of multisensory learning is simple. When students invoke more than one sense, simultaneously or over a period of time, they tend to interact with the material more intensely and thereby retain what they have learned for longer periods of time. In multisensory learning, a teacher engages students through hands-on, visual, auditory, and olfac- tory stimuli, then links the activity to relevant academic objectives. It is through the reciprocal relationship between sensory input and thinking that multisensory techniques gain their power. Sensory input without thought yields only transitory sensations. If you notice a funny smell in the classroom one day but are too tired to bother identifying it, then a natural gas leak might go undetected for weeks. Without a reason to remember sensory input, the information communicated via the senses disappears. How many windows do you have in your classroom? How many fl oor tiles? Although you teach in your classroom every day, unless you have a reason to keep such infor- mation in your head, the sensory input is lost. On the other hand, thought without sensory input is diffi cult to retain. Anyone who has tried to study for a mathematics exam by memo- rizing formulas or slogged through pages of abstruse musings in philoso- phy journals knows the diffi culties of trying to learn through abstraction without the benefi t of real, sensory experience. For purposes of illustration, assume that an academic objective is for students to learn the defi nition of the word mephitic (which means offensive smelling or noxious). A traditional approach for teaching new vocabulary has been for students to copy a word three times, write its defi nition, then use it in a sentence. “It was mephitic” is the kind of sen- tence that students in my classes used to write when I made such a request. Teaching the meaning of mephitic through multisensory stimuli would constitute a dramatic departure for both teacher and learner. Instead of having students fl ip through the pages of a dictionary to fi nd and record a formalized defi nition they might not comprehend, a teacher would ask students to picture in their minds a foul-smelling odor.