The Slingerland Approach
Anna Chiara Mastropasqua, Pietro Tonegato, Emilia Restiglian
At the foundation of the learning mechanisms of reading and writing skills is a complex neurological organisation that also involves the automatic integration of auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic stimuli, organised in specific areas of the human brain. This evidence allows us to re-evaluate the potential of sensory channels, which are capable of supporting an individual’s learning, especially when faced with specific learning disorders (SLD). The Slingerland Approach, developed in the United States in the latter decades of the previous century, is an alternative for teaching children with SLD. It is a multisensory method that considers the sense-perceptive channels (visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic), children’s intelligence, and metacognition. It is a structured, repetitive, and sequential method, which allows for compensation of weak aspects by using strengths in the other modality of receiving the stimulus. This method enables the individual to re-acquire the minimum functional processes to achieve the goal and the compromised basic executive functions. A case study carried out in California explores and describes some aspects of the method. By providing the time and conditions necessary for the acquisition of basic strategies to compensate for difficulties, from a perspective of integration and support between different sensory channels, an enhancement of impaired basic functions and learning to read and write can be achieved.
Keywords
Multisensory, Reading-writing processes, Slingerland, Dyslexia.
