"Multisensory" appears on the marketing page of nearly every reading programme, which has drained the word of most of its meaning. Used properly, it describes something specific and genuinely evidence-backed, not a vague promise of variety.
What It Actually Means
Multisensory instruction deliberately engages more than one sensory pathway at the same time for the same piece of learning: seeing a letter, saying its sound aloud, hearing it, and tracing or writing its shape, all connected to a single moment rather than taught separately. The idea, well supported by research on memory and learning, is that connecting multiple pathways to one piece of information creates a stronger, more retrievable memory than any single pathway alone.
Where It Comes From
Much of modern multisensory reading instruction traces back to the Orton-Gillingham approach, developed in the 1930s specifically for children with dyslexia and still the foundation for most structured literacy programmes used today. It was built on the observation that dyslexic readers, who often struggle specifically with the visual-symbolic channel that most reading instruction relies on almost exclusively, do meaningfully better when other channels carry some of the load.
What It Looks Like in Practice
- Tracing a letter in sand, on a textured surface, or in the air, while saying its sound aloud.
- Tapping out sounds on fingers while blending a word, connecting movement to sound sequencing.
- Colour-coding vowels and consonants or word patterns, adding a visual-categorical layer.
- Building words with letter tiles physically, rather than only reading them printed on a page.
Why It Matters Most for Dyslexic Readers
For a typically developing reader, a single strong pathway, usually visual, is often enough. For a dyslexic reader, that visual-symbolic pathway is frequently the unreliable one, which is exactly why leaning on additional channels, auditory, kinaesthetic, tactile, isn't a nice extra, it's often the difference between a lesson landing and a lesson not landing at all.
Conclusion
Multisensory teaching isn't a marketing flourish, it's a specific, well-researched technique: connect multiple senses to the same piece of learning, deliberately and consistently. It's woven through how we teach phonics at Mount Shine for exactly this reason, not as decoration but as the mechanism that makes reading instruction actually stick for a struggling reader.
Sources
- International Dyslexia Association: Structured Literacy, on the Orton-Gillingham approach and multisensory teaching principles.
- Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, on the neuroscience of multisensory reading instruction.