What is Multisensory Math Tutoring?

Is it helpful or even essential for my student’s success? We’re so glad we asked! Let’s answer this in five parts:

1. Multisensory Math: A Soapbox Rant
2. Multisensory Math: One picture
3. Multisensory Math: Caught on video
4. Multisensory Math: Words of wisdom
5. Multisensory Math: Fall down the rabbit hole!

MULTISENSORY MATH: A SOAPBOX RANT

Multisensory intervention and compassionate instruction are our cup of tea! The multisensory math tutoring approach, based on the Orton-Gillingham instructional methodology, benefits all students! Though often referred to as Multisensory Math Tutoring, we are math specialists who practice multisensory math intervention. Wow, bolded and underlined (To be expected when one is on a soapbox)! Our laser-focus is on kids who need acute assistance with mathematics.

“We are math specialists who practice multisensory math intervention”

Warning: Multisensory math tutoring is not THE answer. Within our company, we see our daily craft as Multisensory Math INTERVENTION. Wow, capitalized this time (as to be expected in a rant)! Not to split hairs, we totally get the “tutoring” label and do answer to it with non-judgment! However, tutoring has the reputation of homework help or possibly assisting students to improve a B+ to an A, not our forte.

Stepping off the soapbox: We DO respond to “Multisensory Math Tutoring” just like you would to an old nickname.

What does this multisensory, custom-tailored instruction look like in a picture?

MULTISENSORY MATH: ONE PICTURE

Look at all that multisensory goodness!

This is a snapshot of our kit that ships to the front door of all our students! Let’s play, “Find all the multisensory math tutoring tools!” It’s just like, where’s waldo! Ok, here are some of the multisensory tools seen:

• Place Value sticks
• Base Ten Place Value Blocks
• Unifix cubes
• Pattern Blocks
• Colored Fraction Tiles
• Geometric shapes
• Clocks, money…
• And more, right?

Spoiler alert: The multisensory math tutoring approach in four words: Sight, touch, hearing, and movement!

MULTISENSORY MATH: CAUGHT ON VIDEO

You’ve caught us red-handed practicing multisensory math! It is right here in the video footage, and it’s on the internet for all to see! Pause and take a quick tour through our tutorials. Keep your ears out for: “touch and say.” This is only the slightest sampling of our over 8,000 hours of online multisensory math instruction that our specialists have delivered!
I especially recommend this 6-minute lesson titled, “Coins & Kids!” if you’d like to see Multisensory math tutoring/intervention in action.

When our intervention is multisensory, it is easier for students to understand the quantity and what symbols represent! Multisensory math tutoring is suitable for ALL learners and essential for MANY. Who are the “Many?” Students with dyscalculia, dyslexia, ADHD, math anxiety, and more!

Research supports the impact of multisensory tutoring. Take an academic detour HERE! 

When our math artisans instruct, their mastery of the multisensory math tutoring approach increases neural connections and enhances learning and memory! Though interpreted as simply tutoring, our company self-image is that of multisensory math interventionist (back on the soapbox)! Daily, our math artisans grab their gear and compassionately disrupt the math blockages!

This customized learning plan and use of empowering methods make a real difference! Watch the difference it made for Alex Charfen’s family. Click HERE.

MULTISENSORY MATH: WORDS OF WISDOM

Here are some examples, borrowed from Marilyn Zecher, of what you may see in a multisensory math tutoring session:

1. Dice & Domino arrangements used to form numeracy patterns
2. Craft sticks used to demonstrate place value
3. Manipulatives (like base ten blocks) used to illustrate multiplication and division concepts
4. Use of Manipulatives to model algebraic concepts such as exponential growth.

Now, words + pictures + video footage! Yes! Our C.E.O. does an amazing job describing, compactly, the multisensory math intervention we do at Made for Math! Click HERE. Sidenote: our company used to be called “Math For Middles!”

Fall Gently Down the Multisensory Math Rabbit Hole

MULTISENSORY MATH: FALL DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE!

Ok, if you’d made it this far and continue reading, you are genuinely falling down the rabbit hole! So, for all ye who have the stamina, please continue this deeper dive!

Core to the Multisensory Math Tutoring approach is the use of the “C.R.A. Method.”

1. Concrete – Things you can touch, just like an O.G. lesson, we can read numbers with our hands. 
2. Representational – Things you can draw
3. Abstract – Just numbers, but the language we built in the concrete and picture parts of instruction buoy up our work with naked numbers. In the words of Marilyn Zecher, CALT, our work in C & R components of the C.R.A. “weds the language of math in such a way as to make the math accessible to all students.”

Sadly, many students have only received the procedural (abstract) instruction, with the concrete & the representational pieces skipped over!

Watch Now: In just over 2 minutes, Adrianne Meldrum, our C.E.O., distills the C.R.A. method for you! Click HERE. Sidenote: our company is formerly known as “Math For Middles!”

And after that tirade, let us go on record to say, “multisensory math tutoring is not the alpha and omega!” That’s right, even though the C.R.A. is essential, it is not isolated! The multisensory math tutoring sits in between the bookends of joy and compassion.

Call us by our nickname: Multisensory Math Tutoring or Call us by our proper name: Multisensory Math Intervention, Either way, we’ll work for you, to eliminate the noise math may be causing in your home, helping your kids rise to their highest potential!

MFM Authors