Multisensory Phonics Instruction & Oral Reading

Fluency Learning Strategy Presentation – EDUC 6304 - Dr. Flores

Houston Baptist UniversityMary Margaret Greer

April 28, 2015

Strategy: Does the Use of Multisensory Phonics Instruction have Effects on Reading Fluency? • Action based study: to determine if kindergarten students, who received

multisensory phonics instruction as well as traditional phonics lessons, would improve their fluency while reading orally at a faster rate than those that received only the traditional phonics approach without any additional multisensory training.

Literature Review:• The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

(2000) recognized fluency as one of the five essential components for becoming a proficient reader.

• NAEYC & International Reading Assoc.(2009) revealed instruction focused on phonemic awareness, letter recognition, segmenting words into sounds, and decoding printed text will support later reading competence.

• Joshi, Dahlgren, and Boulware-Gooden’s (2002) study, found inner city school students who were instructed with the multisensory approach “made statistically significant gains in phonological awareness, decoding, and reading comprehension while the control group made gains only in comprehension”.

• Neuhaus Education Center – uses Basic Language Skills Curriculum based on Otron Gillingham’s, Alphabetic Phonics

Literature Review of Multisensory Phonics Instruction cont.

• International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council (IMSLEC) and the National Teacher Education Task Force of the International Dyslexia Association disclosed that teaching is done using all learning pathways of the brain (visual, auditory, kinesthetic-tactile) simultaneously in order to enhance memory and learning.

• Campbell, Helf, and Cooke (2008) performed a 4 month study of six, second grade students who were part of a treatment group to explore the effects of multisensory addition to their current phonics program.

• Balise, Black, Nussbaum, Oakland, and Stanford (1998) analyzed the effects of a 2-year multisensory reading program based on the Orton-Gillingham instructional methods on students diagnosed with dyslexia. They referenced the importance of phonics instruction declaring, “the consensus among general field studies favors decoding over whole word approaches and suggests that students with dyslexia can acquire word-identification skills when taught using structured phonics techniques” Alphabetic Phonics, which is a multisensory approach to literacy instruction, which was taken from the Orton-Gillingham methods. The study was “found to be effective in promoting the reading development of students with dyslexia”.

Participants & Setting1. Six kindergarten students ages 5 & 6, three male and three female

2. Private School in Houston, Texas

3. Quasi- experimental design was used for study – Treatment & Control group were used to determine pre & post test results

4. The multisensory treatment group consisted of a purposeful sample of below average readers and a random sample of an average kindergarten reader.

5. This treatment group received both multisensory and traditional phonics instruction for twenty-five minutes a day, four days a week.

6. The control group consisted of a random sample of average readers and a purposeful sample of an above average reader who did not receive any multisensory instruction.

Procedures, Strategy Implementation, Method of Assessment

Baseline assessment was given to determine fluency rate & qualitative data was collected from student assessments, observations and anecdotal notes.

Daily review of previous letter/sounds cards - Visual and auditory

Dictated letter sounds while students wrote letter on dry erase board – Auditory & kinesthetic

Move It, Say It – Blending board used magnetic letters to combine sounds into syllables and make words – visual, auditory, kinesthetic

Vowel introductions - Made word families and words on Move It, Say It Board & recording sheet visual, auditory, kinesthetic

Irregular word intro. - Arm Tapping, right to left, reinforce directionality, use word in sentence & underline with red crayon visual, auditory, kinesthetic

Write irregular word with red crayon, on index card on top of sandpaper to create raised word students can trace visual, auditory, kinesthetic

Administer weekly word reading fluency assessment from easyCBM®

Assessment Results

Pre-

test

Wee

k 2

Wee

k 3

Post

-test

65

75

85

95

Treatment Group Reading Fluency

GrahamMaddieAbigail

Readin

g F

luency

Perc

enta

ge

Pre-

test

Wee

k 2

Wee

k 3

Post

-test

65

85

105

Control Group Reading Fluency

WynnRosieDavid

Readin

g F

luency

Perc

enta

ge

Week to Week Change in Reading Fluency Percentage for Each Student in the Treatment Group and Control Group. 

• Unexpected outcome – no significant increase in student reading fluency over four weeks with the multisensory intervention approach

When comparing the two groups reading fluency percentages there was nothing significantly different in the results to indicate that one approach was better than the other, therefore, the results are inconclusive.

• Although Maddie’s Fluency did not increase the total number of words read increased over the four week study

1. When comparing the two groups reading fluency percentages there was nothing significantly different in the results to indicate that one approach was better than the other, therefore, the results are inconclusive.

2. Treatment group findings showed an apparent increase in the difference between the number of words read from the pre-test to the post-test which may be due to the additional intervention of multisensory instruction.

3. Additional research is needed, due to the limitations of the study, therefore, the results are inconclusive.

4. Prediction of future strategy use is continuing the multisensory instructional strategy over an extended time should prove beneficial with a larger sample size, like that of the researchers previously cited.

5. This outcome appears to reject the research hypothesis that the multisensory phonics instruction would be more effective on a kindergarten student’s oral reading fluency than the traditional phonics instruction.

Discussion of Results and Future Use of Strategy

Visual, Auditory & Kinesthetic Aids

Exchanging lower case letter “l” with “h” to make “hog”

Arm Tapping Activity Reinforcing Irregular Words & Left to Right Directionality

Making ConnectionsTransferring Knowledge to Create

Meaningful Learning

Student Making a Connection during the Move It, Say It Activity