The "Dyslexia Training Program," developed at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, is a Tier III reading intervention program that provides intensive phonics instruction to children with dyslexia, primarily in grades two through five. It is a comprehensive two-year program that bridges the gap for school districts in which a…

All four types of instruction (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile) increased word reading accuracy in five seven- to nine-year-old learning disabled students, but there were significant differences in effectiveness among the treatments. Visual-auditory instruction with praise was the most effective of all the procedures. (CL)

Seven learning disabled children (six-nine years old) participated in classes featuring Slingerland (group multisensory activities) or Sullivan (individualized traditional) reading approaches. Both groups evidenced nearly equal improvement in differing areas. Possible reasons contributing to the appeal of the Slingerland approach are noted. (CL)

The results suggested that on a perceptual task not related to reading or mathematics, the addition of input from tactile and auditory sensory modalities does not improve learning performance and, in certain combinations, actually interferes with such performance. (Author/SBH)

The paper reports on multisensory approaches to reading instruction of learning disabled children. G. Fernald's "tracing" method, also known as the V-A-K-T method, is described and research questioning its effectiveness is cited. Next, the Adapted Fernald Technique (AFT) which requires the student to write, illustrate, read and reread…

The importance of motivation in the use of Fernald Techniques is discussed and applied to reading instruction for students with learning problems. Fernald methods begin with a multisensory approach and move through four steps to independent learning. Success depends on students' motivational readiness for instruction and motivation during and…

A spelling program was devised for learning-disabled students, using elements from "Signs for Sounds," the Cloze method, and "Auditory Discrimination In-Depth." Day-by-day use of the program involves drawing word pictures, spelling the words with tiles and blocks, writing on the board, using the words in written sentences, spelling bees, etc. (JDD)

The theory that an individual's haptic and kinesthetic senses, coupled with the visual and auditory senses, are more efficient in transmitting meaningful information to the brain than using the visual and auditory senses alone was illustrated with a class of 10 handicapped (including emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, and culturally…

This case study describes different traditional and sensory approaches to reading which were tried unsuccessfully with Jim, a third-grade nonreader, until a breakthrough was made by teaching him Exact English Signing. The author speculates that other techniques, such as braille, might also help the learning disabled. (SJL)

The multimodal/multisensory interactive unit instructional approach affords teachers and students 16 instructional formats for interaction, differing from other multisensory models in that learner characteristics are neither assigned nor assumed. A case study of an 11-year-old indicated that this approach helped to organize a teaching sequence to…

This article discusses how children with oral and written language disorders can benefit from the Montessori method, especially if the Montessorian is trained to use a Multisensory Structured Language approach. Questions are answered regarding the number of children with learning disabilities, considerations in training the classroom assistant,…

The article outlines six strategies for teaching handwriting to learning disabled elementary students with differing instructional needs. A rationale for the use of each strategy is followed by a step-by-step description of the teaching procedure. Strategy goals include the following: (1) teaching the manuscript alphabet through letter pictures to…

In a study 12 normal children and 12 reading disabled (word recognition difficulties) children (mean age 9.2 years) were compared for reading and listening comprehension to test whether disabled readers, given an auditory presentation, would show comprehension of material comparable to that of normal readers given visual presentation. (PHR)

The progress of 138 elementary students with specific learning disabilities was followed as they were instructed using the Alphabetic Phonics curriculum. After 3 years, the curriculum produced significant progress in reading comprehension for average and above average students, though below average students did not advance substantially in…

ARROW (Aural-Read-Respond-Oral-Written) is a multisensory teaching approach where children listen to their own voices on tape recorders. Advantages of the ARROW program as demonstrated at four sites in Blackford, Somerset (England), with elementary/secondary students presenting moderate to severe learning difficulties, reading/spelling/vocabulary…