The Power of Multi-sensory Learning:
A New "Old" Way for Kids to Learn Spanish
Imagine a group of children being guided through a museum. As they walk, they listen to the guide's comments, look at the exhibits, stand on tiptoes to get a closer look, maybe climb excitedly on replicas of old fighter planes or dig carefully in a sandbox for "dinosaur fossils." The combination of listening, looking, and moving around creates a lasting impression—things connect to each other and become memorable parts of a rich and engaging experience.
Field trips or museum trips don't seem like cutting-edge educational policy, but they work a lot like the educational tools and strategies of what is known as multi-sensory learning. Multi-sensory learning takes advantage of the way our senses—hearing, sight, and touch, primarily—reinforce one another while learning. Each sense builds toward a more complete experience of a concept or idea. Because multi-sensory learning gives you more than one way of experiencing something, its ideal for children who naturally engage multiple senses in both learning and play.
It is also ideal for the creation of the type of immersive environment that is so crucial for learning a second language.
Any child can learn Spanish—or any other language!
Part of the power of language is that it is not just words—and certainly not just words on a page. It's communication, the heart of how we all relate to and interact with one another. Language is alive! Learning a language, whether it's your first or your fourth, requires that you experience it consistently and in many ways, using different parts of your body and brain.
Scientists and researchers have, for the past few years, increasingly explored how our senses affect the information that gets passed on to our brains. A lot of work has been devoted to finding out how people seem to favor one sense or another when learning new things. Scientists and education experts call these preferences learning styles. There seem to be three main learning styles—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile learners.
Visual learners prefer to take in new information by having it right before their eyes, in diagrams or charts if possible. If your child is a visual learner, she may enjoy playing with flash cards or picture books with vibrant colors. Auditory learners may get the most when they can both hear and respond verbally to what they're learning. Your child may be an auditory learner if she picks up on verbal directions quickly and loves to rhyme or sing to remember stories or new words. Kinesthetic learners find they really understand a lesson when they can get their hands on whatever it is they're learning—acting out a new idea rather than just hearing about it or seeing it. If you see your child rushing to figure out your cell phone by taking it apart, then she may be a kinesthetic learner.
New ways of making the most of our senses for learning Spanish
Of course, many learners don't have just one style which they alone prefer. Instead, we find things most captivating and most memorable when they engage more than one sense. Even if one is preferred over the others, learning styles overlap in most cases. One may be the favorite, but it doesn't mean the others aren't useful.
Multi-sensory education targets each learning style individually (because it includes them all), but it also brings them all together through one activity or experience. This ability to reach almost anyone, and to do so effectively and pleasurably, opens up worlds of possibilities for education, especially when new multimedia technologies are added in to the mix.
Another new development is the use of multi-sensory learning to focus particularly on kids for whom regular educational methods and approaches are ineffective. Multi-sensory learning allows these students to remain in the general classroom. Any child can learn to read—or to speak another language—by focusing on the methods and the cues that speak to him or her.
Outside the classroom—an opportunity to learn Spanish in a way that connects
Multi-sensory learning has great potential for your child outside of the classroom as well—or before she ever gets there. The body of research backing the importance and benefits of early exposure to a second language continues to grow. Programs which use a multi-sensory platform make learning fun. Audio and video as well as interactive features and activities get kids moving, dancing, and singing—vastly enriching the experience.
Programs which take advantage of the power of multi-sensory learning are like a wonderful trip through a museum of language—not a stuffy museum, of course, but a lively one that immerses your child in a richer experience. Like a good museum exhibit, your child is immersed in a new world which captivates her and creates a lasting memory.
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