Multisensory learning in a bilingual environment?
Babies and children learn about life by connecting with the world around them through the senses they have available.
They see, hear, smell, taste and touch the world around them.
They discover dogs bark and cats meow by listening to the noises they make, identifying them in the brain and labeling them first.
They can tell an apple from an orange not only by looking at them but also by smelling them, holding them and tasting them.
They differentiate hot and cold things by touching and looking at them and sorting them in their brains first.
The senses are their most familiar, most basic way to explore, process, and come to understand new information and store it in their brains.
The question is, then, why don’t we make use of all these channels when we learn a new language?
I believe we can smell, taste, touch, hear and see language and I try to offer my little kids lots of opportunities to use their multisensory abilities.
That way I don’t narrow my children’s learning possibilities.
Multisensory teaching is making use of the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, smell and taste channels simultaneously taking into account our children’s learning styles.
That’s why must allow young children to learn through experience, not just lecture.Children need to use their senses and be engaged in meaningful experiences. As we talk with them about what they are observing and sensing, we give them new language tools to connect with these more familiar sensory tools, building language as well as supporting cognitive concepts specific to the experience.
While children learn through their senses, they also are developing the ability to use those senses and are building the neurological pathways associated with each one.
Multisensory activities are extremely useful when teaching a second language because the active use of the senses gives the brain memories to hang onto.
This is the way we acquire our first language. Why don´t using the same strategies when teaching a new language?
We learn our mother tongue by listening, touching, smelling, tasting and looking at things and making connections about those things and our previous knowledge about them.
In the past, language too often just meant text, and increasingly learners are finding text difficult and de-motivating. We need to accommodate different learning styles; not everyone learns best in the same way.
Research tells us that just telling someone something is not the most efficient way of getting them to learn it.
Besides learners need lots of practice in manipulating the elements of the language (consolidation) before attempting to use the language to speak, listen, read or write.When teaching a new vocabulary set or a new grammar structure consider the five senses we use to relate the world around us.
Let children see, taste, smell, hear, and touch the new words (when possible).
Using the 5 senses provides our children a 'peg' to hang language on and as an aid to memory and recall.
What materials can you use for the senses?
Sense of Sight : text, pictures, graphics, realia, books, posters, videos, technology, puppets, flannel board and pocket charts, word walls, etc.
Sense of Hearing: listening to teacher and others, to recordings, videos, music, talking, shouting, whispering, saying rhymes, singing, sounds around us, story-telling, clapping, chanting, fingerplays, etc.
Sense of Touch: different textures, mystery boxes or bags, handling objects, making
things, describing shapes, body language, games involving manipulating objects, toys, etc.
Sense of Taste and Smell: tasting food and drink, smelling different scents, fragrances, guessing food by smelling and tasting it, etc
If you are teaching animals in the pond you can use flashcards or real pictures of the animals, record animals making sounds and get kids listen and identify the animals, get the children to move like animals.
Or if you are teaching fruits you can use realia or posters, let children manipulate fruits, smell them and of course, eat them!.
Multisensory strategies stimulate children by engaging them at different levels and enabling them to use their personal strengths to help them learn in the different learning styles.
I share this post in response to the five star blogger challenge posted on The Organized Classroom Blog by Charity Preston.
Stay tuned! Be sure to register as a Follower.
.jpg)
