NOBIDA is always happy to host the charming and enlightening Marilyn Zecher for her Multisensory Math programs. The summer of 2025 was no different; this year, we offered 2 full-length, live in-person classes full of ready-to-use techniques at Walsh University in North Canton. We are proud to report that Zecher’s in-person Multisensory Math I and Multisensory Math II classes attracted participants from far and wide, including attendees from Florida, New Mexico, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Oregon, Mississippi, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Ohio for these amazing two weeks of learning in Northern Ohio!
Zecher is the newly named Founding Fellow of Multisensory Math at the Orton Gillingham Academy. Based on the Orton-Gillingham philosophy of teaching, her programs use multisensory techniques to teach mathematics, an approach especially effective with students who learn differently, those placed in inclusion classes, and ESL learners.
Zecher’s Multisensory Math (MM) courses promote the following concepts:
- Implementing multisensory instruction (incorporating senses beyond the traditional visual and auditory) creates stronger conceptual understanding and memory
- MM philosophy can be used in introductory through upper-level math courses
- Students with dyslexia tend to have weaker than average visual and auditory processing skills (even if overall vision and hearing are typical), and MM instruction greatly benefits their learning
- MM strategies help with remedial instruction for all learners
- MM is compatible with all types of math curricula and programs
Zecher's ‘25 Multisensory Mathematics I (MMI) foundational course wowed a group of eager instructors seeking hands-on techniques. The MMI course is a research-based, Concrete-Representation-Abstract (CRA) approach to teaching mathematics as advocated by the National Math Panel and the NCTM. Thus, participants learned to apply Zecher’s CRA-inspired methodology in guiding students from foundation skills and numeracy to place value, operations, fractions, and decimals. Participants spent time learning how to use manipulatives to demonstrate concepts for themselves. Zecher’s lively demonstrations taught them how to effectively reinforce concepts, aid memory, and enhance performance for students at all learning levels. The strategic instruction also focused on methods to help students learn and retrieve math facts, as well as structured procedures for computational accuracy.
The following week, Marilyn Zecher presented her Multisensory Math II (MMII) course to a group of enthusiastic, upper-level math instructors. The course builds on MM1 concepts and offers more intensive instruction from Marilyn through a diagnostic-prescriptive lens. Participants learned to apply the Multisensory Math methodology in guiding students from foundation skills such as multiplication, division, and fractions to operations in upper levels of math, including Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry. Attendees learned that, yes, manipulatives should be used at the higher levels of math, too! The course is packed with neuroscience research and strategies backed by the Science of Learning, leading to many “aha moments” among participants. Many reported that they wished these strategies had been available to them during their high school years.
NOBIDA is grateful that Marilyn chose to offer her in-person classes this summer in Northern Ohio. We hope to learn more useful multisensory math strategies from her in the future.
