Introduction

I teach second grade at Keithshire Elementary. It is a new school that opened in 2011, located in the south central part of Fayette County. The current enrollment is 652 students. The population is approximately 71% White, 9% African American, 7% Hispanic, 9% Asian, and 4% other. There are 99 second graders divided between 4 classrooms. The average class size is about 25 students. We have a floating assistant that is a retired classroom teacher. She works with small groups of students among all four classrooms. I have 25 students in my class, 7 girls and 18 boys. Among these students I have a total of 6 ESL students. Three of them are transitional students, meaning they have tested out but are still monitored and receive accommodations for testing, but do not get pulled out. The other three receive intense ESL services. They get pulled out twice a day, working on reading comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary. These students are also included in a small reading group with other struggling readers during my reading centers block.

Right now, my group of struggling readers is learning different strategies to help them read independently. I begin the group with sight word practice, then I introduce the strategy we are practicing and model it, then they practice the strategy on their own by reading a leveled text. I observe them reading and assist them when needed. Overall, these students seem to enjoy reading and want to become better readers. They get excited when they can read a text on their own. One problem is it takes extra practice to retain skills/strategies and then they seem to get “lost”, meaning they do not apply what they learn in small groups independently, which makes for slow and sometimes little progress. 

Multisensory teaching is when a student learns through more than one of the senses. Bradford (2008) states, “Studies from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development have shown that for children with difficulties learning to read, a multisensory teaching method is the most effective teaching method.”  Students that struggle to read often have trouble with visual tracking and processing auditory information, which are characteristics I have noticed with Ella, Bill, and Frank.

            I am hoping that adding multisensory activities in my small group of struggling readers, their reading skills and comprehension will improve. My struggling ESL students have a lot of gains to make, but I think once they find the confidence and are able to read and comprehend, they will move mountains! My research question is, “How will multi-sensory activities impact struggling, ESL readers?”