Multi-sensory tasks are engaging and naturally gain students’ attention. Adding multi-sensory activities into your math centers can help students persevere and focus on learning.
Multi-sensory activities are the perfect way to build in practice and review of introduced skills… a crucial part of guided math. This is the third and final post of Smashing Strategies For Guided math, a monthly link-up between 9 teacher bloggers. Each of us will share guided math strategies, tips and resources. Here are link to the other 2 posts in the series in case you haven’t seen them:
On to today’s topic…
Let’s start with what multi-sensory means. This refers to presenting the tasks in different modalities. There are 4 main sensory learner styles: visual, auditory, tactile and movement. Adding math tasks to your centers that target these different learning styles will help all of your students learn and engage with the materials. Here are some examples of different center activities that address each learner style.
Tactile
Add in opportunities for students to get their hands on the task and using different materials. Here are 2 different ways:
Shaving cream gives a lot of tactile input! You could also use finger paint, playdoh or make finger prints with ink.
Another option is to add in a fine motor component:
Movement
Count the room…. We do it for each theme unit because it is a HUGE hit! I love it because the it targets math, gets students writing and puts them in different positions. They love it because it i fun!!
Add gross motor and academics! Read more about it HERE.
Visual
Most of our centers contain a visual component. Here are some tasks that we use during centers that are visually based:
Auditory
This one combines movement, auditory and tactile. Here students had to listen for a number, run up and squirt the correct floating number. They LOVED it!! Read more about this center HERE.
There are TONS of ideas for adding multi-sensory activities into your math instruction and centers. As a bonus… your students will love it!!
Want to learn more ideas and tips for getting students moving? Read: Put research Into Practice By Building In Movement.
****Don’t forget to enter the giveaway at the bottom of the post!!!
I couldn't find your newsletter on your page so I didn't subscribe to it. I love your multisensory math activities! I actually had a kindergartner on my caseload who tested into special ed because he did nothing in class and it looked like he was so low performing. I started teaching him using multisensory tactics, and he learned so fast, he's probably ahead of a lot of the others in his grade!