The Relationship Between Multisensory Learning and Phonemic Awareness and Letter Identification in Kindergarten

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between multisensory learning and phonemic awareness and letter identification in Kindergarten. The researcher wanted to determine the positive or negative correlation between a multisensory approach to teaching and a student’s overall ability to increase retention capabilities. The seven-week intervention took place in an elementary school located in the Midwest. The intervention participants were six Kindergarten students from the researcher’s classroom. The students were selected based on their past assessment data, specifically regarding letter names/sounds. Instructional methods used were small group, teacher lead, hands on activities that qualified as a multisensory approach. Data was collected in the form of assessments that focused on letter names/sounds, student created journal pages and informal teacher observations that were recorded in shorthand in the teacher journal. Results support the theory that multisensory teaching methods positively affect a student’s ability to increase his/her letter names/sounds identification skills. There is reason to believe that using the multisensory approach to teaching has positive effects and could be replicated in future interventions