[senco-forum] Developing listening skills in secondary pupils-Eddie's CD

"I feel that this is a nonsense statement as the whole point of  multisensory
is to provide pegs/props -in this case visual- on which to hang  the weaker
input -in this case auditory.What we are hopefully doing as with  all 
teaching , is using the child's strengths to develop weaker  areas."

I think you're confusing multi-modal mainstream teaching with specfic  
interventions for a specific modality. Teaching children to use their other  senses 
to compensate is a good strategy and one that they will naturally adopt  as a 
coping strategy. Using their strengths helps them to better COMPENSATE FOR  
the weaker areas. I agree that a holistic teaching approach that gives as many  
in-roads into the longterm memory by associations is important but uit does 
not  work for all children and is certainly not applicable when remediating one 
sene,  one modality.

When I said  'Multi-sensory  reinforcement does not aid a  defiicit in one 
modality if you
are remediating  that modality -you have  to work on that modality in 
isolation or it just  confuses the issue.' I  meant that you need to focus on 
listening to aid listening skills.

If you were working with a child who has poor eyesight, using listening  
skills won't benefit them- its like giving a child glasses, a stick and a  hearing 
aid, a special pen to write with and a leg brace to make sure they  walk 
better, all at once does not help what is lacking. Poor vision needs  specific 
intervention for the eyes, all the rest confuses the issue.

If you were working with a child with poor hearing, you would not use eye  
exercises. He same applies to listening in those with processing problems.

If working on short term auditory memory or the sequencing aspects of  
listening, I would use games like "I went to the shop and I bought.." etc, ones  
that use listening skills alone, where there is no reading or writing involved,  
simply listening. The child will then associate listening skills with 
listening,  otherwise they won't know what you are asking for. They need to train 
their  brain to respond apporpriately with as little risk of ambiguity as 
possible,  otherwise they may come to expect written tasks to be involved in  
listening.

If you are working with a child who has attention deficits that prevent  
listening, I would keep drawing their attention back by speaking to them  
personally using their name, have them seated near you, use eye contact to draw  their 
attention, keep visual or other distractions at a minimum. This is also  
vital in those with processing probolems who are often distracted by visual  
distractions because in aiding APD they "see" everything and are distrascted by  
it. Allow them to twirl a pencil to aid concentration...this is multi-modakl but 
 works in a sensory integration sort of way.

I speak from experience. My son with APD uses vision to compensate (as a  
gifted visual spatial learner) and with his Irlen syndrome and visual perceptual  
difficulties has developed his own coping strategies to compensate for them  
which are many and various depoending on the situation. If he is expected  to 
listen and write and or listen and read together his brain does not know  how 
to cope and he cannot do either. But if expected to listen he can now focus  
and do so in a quiet room with no distractions and he lipreads. I used to  be a 
big advocate of multi-sensory methods for all but after teaching him for  two 
and a half years, I have had to rethink my approach.

"Have you  never observed teachers who sit with pupils  whilst they work thro
a  computer  exercise or worksheet, or as I often do multitask -  individually
teaching one child or listening to one reading whilst the other  3 are
working on pc/ sheets/drawing a poster to reinforce a spelling pattern  with
my (generally) watchful eye on them - the child I'm individually  teaching
knows that over the period of time I will continually interact with  the
others as well "

You are in fact still sitting that child at a PC while you are occupied  
elsewhere and none of those children can get your full attention, with the best  
will in the world and no offence meant to those good teachers out there that d  
their best with what they have... it is not your fault but the lack of 
funding  available. I have witnessed this and I know that the children in those  
situations are probably being funded for a one to one  withdrawal intervention 
and generally end up in a class of  3 or  4 or more all being "remediated" at 
the same time, which does not give any of  them the one to one help they need. 
Statemented children who are funded for this  sort of help rarely get the 
individual help they need and would benefit most  from, because of that wonderful 
phrase "best management of resources" which  means a SENCo,  SLT or LSA being 
used for all those that need it at once  because they are there...not the one 
to one individual teaching for the  individual it is put in place or funded 
for, that would benefit most from  one to one not one to 5 with one eye hear and 
one ear there whilst  marking... but this is another issue. Unfortunately some 
teachers  will sit a child at the PC do do CDroms alone on every withdrawal  
lesson, while they do other things and very little else will be done with that 
 child...something I have also witnessed. None of which takes away from the  
fact that the CDrom in question does very little to aid listening

Best wishes,
Aly

Chair Auditory Processing Disorder in  the UK/APDUK
www.lacewingmultimedia.com/APD.htm 
www.apduk.org