Derived from the morphemes ‘multi’ and ‘mode,’ multimodal instruction engages students’ visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), tactile (touching), and kinesthetic (moving) sensory modalities. Multiple sensory input and motor output systems are involved to enhance learning and engagement.

• Multimodal instruction benefits learners by distributing cognitive processing across auditory, visual, and kinesthetic pathways, preventing cognitive overload of one modality (Van Merrienboer & Sweller, 2005).
• Educators must be aware of counterproductive instructional design where utilizing multimodal instruction is redundant, placing an unnecessary burden on working memory (Ashman, 2018).

Multimodal strategies increase engagement and support deep understanding for all learners including struggling readers and English learners (Cárdenas-Hagan, 2020).

In this exemplar, notice how a kindergarten teacher incorporates auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic modalities when introducing a new letter-sound correspondence.