Making Math Real: Neuroconnectivity and the Science of Multisensory Learning

This is what math feels like when a child hasn’t built neural connections that give numbers meaning.

In 1996, educational therapist David Berg created Making Math Real to bridge that gap by building understanding first, then connecting it to the symbols on the page.

How Making Math Real Builds Understanding Before Symbols

Making Math Real is a math methodology created by educational therapist David Berg and developed through his Making Math Real Institute. Its core principle is simple: build mathematical understanding before asking children to memorize numbers, symbols, or procedures.

A child can memorize a math fact and still not understand the relationship behind it. If the answer disappears from memory, the child may have nowhere else to go. But if the child understands the relationship, they have something to work with. They can picture it, rebuild it, talk through it, or use what they already know to find an answer again.

The method creates a pathway that is easy to follow and replicate:

1. The child experiences the mathematical idea through concrete, visual, verbal, and physical activities.
2. The child connects those experiences to the underlying concept.
3. The child learns how numbers and symbols express that concept.
4. The child practices applying the idea accurately and independently.

This approach makes abstract mathematics both meaningful and tangible.

What a Making Math Real Lesson Feels Like

A Making Math Real lesson changes the experience of math for children.

Instead of starting with symbols, the child starts with something real to work with. The idea is taught through what the child can see, hear, say, build, move, draw, and eventually write.

• See it: The child sees the math idea through objects, patterns, spacing, or a visual model. The concept is no longer hidden inside symbols on a page.
• Hear it: The child hears precise math language connected to what is happening in front of them. The words match the idea being taught.
• Say it: The child says the relationship out loud. Speaking the math helps the child organize the idea and make it clear enough to use.
• Build it: The child builds the quantity or relationship with real materials. The math becomes something they can work with, not just something they are told to remember.
• Move it: The child moves objects or gestures in a way that matches the math. Movement connects the action to the concept.
• Draw it: The child draws the relationship after building it. The drawing becomes a bridge between the real objects and the written symbols.
• Write it: The child writes the numbers and symbols after the meaning has been built.

The lesson moves from visual, auditory, verbal, and physical connection to written math.

That sequence helps strengthen the neural pathways the child uses to understand, remember, and apply what they learned to future lessons.

<a href="https://www.readacademy.com/blog/making-math-real-effective-strategies-for-bringing-math-lessons-to-life/">
  <img src="https://www.readacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Multisensory.png"
       alt="Infographic: the seven steps of a Making Math Real lesson, see it, hear it, say it, build it, move it, draw it, write it"
       width="620" height="775" style="max-width:100%;height:auto;" />
</a>
<p>Infographic by <a href="https://www.readacademy.com/">READ Academy of Sacramento</a></p>

How Neuroconnectivity Helps Children Understand Math

Neuroconnectivity is how separate brain systems work together to form one understanding.

In math, this is part of what researchers call symbol grounding: how a written number or symbol becomes connected to real meaning.

Understanding math depends on several systems working together:

• Visual processing: seeing numbers, symbols, patterns, spacing, and written relationships.
• Auditory processing: hearing the language of math and connecting it to the concept being taught.
• Language: saying the relationship clearly enough to understand and use it.
• Tactile input: touching and building quantities instead of only seeing them on a page.
• Motor planning: moving objects, gestures, or written steps in a way that matches the math.
• Memory: holding facts, steps, and relationships long enough to work with them.
• Attention: staying with the problem and knowing which information matters.
• Number meaning: connecting symbols to quantity, comparison, pattern, and strategy.

When these systems connect, neural pathways strengthen.

The instruction holds because the child has more than one way to understand, remember, and use the math.

Multisensory math was developed to build stronger connection and improve retention.

What Brain Research Shows About Gesture and Math Learning

This is one of the most interesting parts of multisensory math instruction: movement can become part of how the brain remembers the math.

In a Making Math Real lesson, movement creates visual cues the child can follow. The child can watch the idea take shape, connect, and move toward written math.

In brain research, this kind of meaningful movement is called a gesture.

One study looked directly at this connection. Researchers including Susan Goldin-Meadow and Karin James taught eight-year-old children to solve mathematical equations. Some children learned through speech alone. Others learned through speech paired with meaningful hand gestures.[4]

Later, the children solved new problems while lying still inside an fMRI scanner.

Here is the fascinating part.

Their hands were still, but the earlier movement was still active in how the brain processed the math.

The movement stayed with the learning.

Even after the children stopped using their hands, the brain still used that connection to get back to the math.

For multisensory instruction, that matters. When movement, language, and written symbols connect at the moment the child is learning, the pathway becomes easier to use again.

That is why timing matters.

Why Timing Matters When the Pieces Come Together

The next study explains why the timing of the lesson matters.

Researchers looked at what happened when children learned math with speech and gesture together, compared with children who received them separately.[5]

When words and movement happen together, the child can connect them as one idea.

The explanation gives the movement meaning. The movement gives the explanation a visual path to follow.

This is the same principle behind multisensory math instruction.

The child is not collecting separate activities. They are building one connected understanding. When the pieces happen together, the pathway is easier to form, easier to remember, and easier to use again.

Why Connection Matters More Than Learning Style

This is where multisensory teaching is often misunderstood.

The point is not to decide whether a child is a visual learner, auditory learner, or hands-on learner.

The point is to help the child connect the same idea across several systems at once.

A child may prefer one kind of instruction, but preference is not the same as learning.

Making Math Real works from a different principle.

The child sees the idea, hears the language, says the relationship, works with it physically, draws it, and then connects it to written math.

With multisensory learning, each part strengthens the connection as a whole.

Learning-style labels do the opposite: they isolate learning in one lane and limit the connective pathways that multisensory teaching is designed to build.

How Making Math Real Builds Toward Abstract Thinking

Making Math Real starts with real things because math has to mean something before it can become abstract.

Blocks, drawings, movement, and spoken language help the child see the idea, work with it, and connect it to the symbols on the page.

Those materials work like training wheels. They give the child a stable way to connect real experience to mathematical meaning while the symbols begin to make sense.

Those supports stay only long enough for the child to connect real experience to the symbols.

Once the equation carries that meaning on its own, the child is no longer depending on the materials. They are using the math.

How Memory and Multisensory Instruction Work Together

A child can understand the math and still lose the problem while trying to hold too much in mind.

That is where multisensory instruction helps memory do its job.

When the child can see, touch, say, move, and draw the math, every part of the problem does not have to live in memory at once.

The support keeps the math available while the child thinks.

It gives memory something to hold onto, so the learning is easier to retain.

What a Trained Teacher Watches During a Making Math Real Lesson

A trained teacher is watching the connections underneath the answer.

They watch how the child moves from the object to the drawing, from the language to the symbol, and from the symbol back to the meaning.

Those moments show whether the child can move from materials to symbols without losing the meaning.

If the child can explain, rebuild, or apply the idea, the lesson moves forward.

If the child forgets what the symbol means, instruction returns to the object, drawing, or visual cue that makes the connection clear.

That is the work of Making Math Real.

The child moves from concrete experience into symbols with the meaning still intact.

Then the math can stand on its own.

Final Thought

Math begins to change when symbols stop feeling empty.

For a child who struggles with math, number sense, dyscalculia, or other learning differences, the issue may not be effort. The issue may be that the meaning underneath the math has never been fully built.

Making Math Real gives the child a way to build that meaning, connect it to the symbols, and carry the understanding forward.