Ten Quick and Easy Ways to Enhance Early Literacy Instruction: Tips from a School Occupational Therapist

Abstract

Occupational therapists (OTs) can be valuable team members because of their expertise in activity and environmental analysis and, in particular, their skills in facilitating access to curricular and extracurricular activities for students with unique learning needs (AOTA, 2017). School OTs can assist with creating multi-sensory activities and providing suggestions for environmental modifications to increase children’s engagement in learning activities to support literacy learning. Research shows that when children use multiple senses to learn new skills, they are not only able to remember the new skills more quickly, but they are also able to attend to activities longer (Golden & McCraken, 2016). The more parts of the brain involved in tasks, the greater the likelihood of learning; thus, multisensory learning through participation in meaningful, fun literacy activities can increase learning!