Why Multisensory?

According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, 42 million adult Americans can't read; 50 million can recognize so few printed words they are limited to a 4th or 5th grade reading level. For decades now, attention has been spent on the growing illiteracy problem in the United States. The difficulty in this battle lies in the way we train our students how to read.

Not all students can learn to read by being presented with a letter from the alphabet and being told what sound that letter makes. A multisensory approach is needed. Some students’ strengths lie in a tactile approach, feeling how the sound is formed in their mouth. Other students may perform best by seeing their mouth in a mirror and visualizing how the sound is formed. Regardless of the “sense” that works best with each individual student, tactile, visual or auditory, the key to reading success lies in delivering the necessary foundations for reading in the correct sequence. . Before you can teach a child "D" is for Dog, they must first learn how to form the sound /d/ in their mouth. This concept is known as Phonemic Awareness, and is a vital foundational step in developing strong reading skills.

What Makes MTI Superior?

You have a choice in choosing a provider for your training in Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing™ (LiPS®), Visualizing & Verbalizing™ (V/V™), and other Phonemic Awareness courses. Why should you consider MTI of the Stratford Foundation?

• Trainings are affordable. MTI's non-profit status enables trainings at a substantial discount to competitors.
• Trainings match No Child Left Behind standards. MTI's methodology is systematic, explicit and measurable.
• Qualified Instructors. Unlike other corporations that may have less stringent standards set forth in the trainers they use. MTI adheres to strict guidelines in the trainers we choose. All of our trainers have a Masters in Education and have actively used phonemic awareness training for at least a year before becoming a trainer.
• Check the facts: MTI's phonemic awareness intervention generated dramatic gains. Kindergartners demonstrated 90% DIBELS phoneme segmentation fluency (a 43% increase) and 75% DIBELS nonsense word fluency (a 39% increase) over five years of MTI's intervention*.
• MTI's participants are engaged and happy. 99% rate MTI as excellent or very good.
• Districts love MTI's trainings. 90% of MTI's districts request additional trainings.

*Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a set of standardized, individually administered measures of early literacy development. Testing based on MTI's trainings was conducted in the Ohio's public school system from 2001-2006.

MTI’s mission includes, providing all individuals, regardless of socioeconomic status, school location and program costs access to highly acclaimed, publicly available, teaching techniques such as Lindamood-Bell™. Please learn more about our mission here.

Learn what makes MTI’s Methodology Unique to other professional development workshops…

Contact us today for further information or to plan an individualized workshop for your school district.

Want to learn more about MTI’s workshops before committing to training your whole district? Sign up for an upcoming Meet & Teach

MTI’s Mission

The Multisensory Training Institute takes immense pride in offering small, inspiring educational workshops at affordable prices. We believe, highly acclaimed publicly available teaching techniques such as Lindamood-Bell™, should be made available to all individuals, regardless of socioeconomic status, school location and program costs. As a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to spreading the news of excellent teaching methodologies, MTI adheres to their mission to disseminate this information as a cost-effective solution to individuals typically unable to access traditional training offered by for-profit corporations.

MTI’s mission is to serve individuals and districts in their discovery of well-researched and classroom-driven teaching methods.

MTI seeks to:

• Provide affordable, high quality professional development opportunities to individuals and districts from all economic and cultural backgrounds.
• Respect each participant’s current use of materials and curriculum and provide assistance in managing the union of old and new methodologies.
• Respect each participant’s unique learning pace and acquisition of novel skills by continually monitoring participant learning.
• Provide each workshop participant a balanced, logical approach to teaching phonemic awareness, encoding and decoding strategies and reading and oral comprehension skills.

MTI believes:

& Methodologies are best implemented in a team approach including, but not limited to, the regular educator, special educator, speech pathologist and reading teacher.

& In the joy of learning and laughing together, seeking to build a sense of community among our participants through hands-on activities, modeling, game play and pure FUN. Our presenters know excellent learning occurs when a team of participants is comfortable in both learning and play.

& In providing workshops in unique locations to foster each participant’s sense of well-being and openness to learning. We encourage weekend professional development retreats to nurture both the academic and emotional body.

The Multisensory Training Institute’s professional development is simply the beginning of a long and valuable journey. Subsequent to each workshop, participants may continue seeking assistance through on-line consultation and group chats. One-day follow-up workshops are frequently offered to individuals and districts in order to support the development of each participant’s individual program.

The Multisensory Training Institute of the Stratford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit teaching facility and is not affiliated with Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, Inc., Pat Lindamood, Phyllis Lindamood or Nanci Bell.