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Title 1 specialist from an IB Academy lists a number of technology tools for a multi-sensory approach to learning.

The Walter Johnson Academy of International Studies is an International Baccalaureate (IB) school where, at any given time, our students speak 25 different native languages. As a Title 1 specialist and ELL Student Success Advocate for grades 6 through 8, last year I taught students from countries including Mexico, Bulgaria, Russia, Croatia, Bosnia, China, Egypt, and Guatemala.

To help these students from diverse backgrounds learn academic as well as conversational English, I use a multi-sensory approach that supplements reading and speaking with multiple sensory components including:

• Auditory Learning: Teacher instruction is accompanied by an online auditory component to the phonics instruction, as well as affording students the opportunity to listen to passages while simultaneously reading them.
• Kinesthetic Learning: Students engage in manipulating and marking words to assist their decoding of words. They do this on individual student whiteboards (made of card stock in cellophane sleeves used at students’ desks), as well as on the classroom whiteboard and Smart Board.
• Visual Learning: All lessons are projected and interactive on the Smart Board. In addition, students use anchor charts (posted in the class as well as personal ones) where they reference five phonetic rules and two decoding skills. Visual support is also encouraged during student writing. Students are taught to begin different writing tasks using various “thinking maps,” where they visually think/plan/jot notes in their native languages. They then reference this as they translate and write in English.

This multi-sensory approach is supported by a number of technology tools, as well.

My Tech Essentials

1. Reading Horizons: Reading Horizons is a program designed to teach English using all the above components (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic). Tenets of the program include face-to-face teacher instructional time as well as on-line software reinforcing, and affording practice of the skills presented. On-line instruction is offered in several languages so the student may receive directions in their native tongue. Students use the software for on-line assessments and to practice at home. I also use the on-line component of the program also collects data which is reviewed and share with students monthly.

2. SMART Board and SMART Notebook Software: Smart Notebook software is used in every lesson presented.

• The Smart Board is interactive and lessons are continually revised.
• Vocabulary development is on-going; definitions of words, along with pictures, are posted to help students make visual connections.
• Students are actively engaged as they go to the whiteboard and are physically moving about and interacting with the material on the board.
• Each lesson is saved for a quick review the following day. This has proved very rich for students to visually connect (once again) to prior knowledge.

3. Google Translate: While we are a 1:1 device school; Google Translate is the only phone app that is allowed in my classroom. Google Translate is used in reading and in writing tasks by students:

• When students are reading and come across a word they don’t know, the app allows them to easily translate it;
• In writing, a student often will compose their text in their native language first, then use Google Translate to find the English counterpart word(s).
• Students have demonstrated so much more confidence and apparent comfort when they have this tool at their disposal. They are able to convey their thoughts far more effectively and, I think, feel much more at ease in being able to do so.

A tenet of an IB school is the philosophy that we are all global learners. The strategies and tools mentioned above have helped our students do that and, we hope, be thinkers, inquirers, and reflective and principled global citizens.