Tapping into Multimodal Learning in the 21st Century

When it comes to learning styles, you’ve probably heard the classic V-A-K framework: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles. For so long, we were encouraged to pinpoint which style each of our students preferred and tailor instruction around that. Here we are in the 21st Century, teaching our kiddos who toggle between YouTube tutorials, fast-moving games, TikTok how-tos, and AI tools before the school bell even rings. Their brains are used to quick shifts, layered information, and a blend of senses happening at once. That means our teaching has to shift as well. That’s exactly where multimodal learning comes in.

Instead of focusing on which “type” of learner each student is, we should now think about how many different ways we can help our students make sense of an idea. When instruction offers multiple modalities, what our students see, hear, say, build, sketch, write, model, or move, it opens doors for every learner. Multimodality isn’t about sorting our kids into categories. It’s about designing rich, flexible learning experiences that meet the reality of today’s diverse classrooms.

Why Multimodal Learning Matters in the 21st Century

Students today live in a sensory-rich world where visual and auditory information constantly overlap, interact, and compete for attention. They swipe through videos, play interactive games, listen to podcasts, and use AI tools to explore new ideas, often at the speed of curiosity. When we bring multimodal learning into the classroom with that same intentional variety, it feels familiar to their brains. Purposeful shifts in how information is presented keep them alert, engaged, and mentally anchored in the lesson.

Modern classrooms also reflect a wide range of backgrounds and needs. We teach multilingual learners, students with unique neurological profiles, and children who arrive with very different levels of prior knowledge. When we lean into multimodality, we give each of our students an entry point into the same content. Rather than expecting everyone to learn in a single way, we create learning experiences that honor the idea that understanding grows stronger when it comes from multiple angles.

Using Visual Modalities to Support Multimodal Learning

Visual thinking remains an incredibly powerful pathway for understanding, especially when it’s one part of a bigger multimodal plan. When your students can see an idea through illustrations, diagrams, color-coding, or sample models, abstract concepts suddenly feel more manageable. Visuals help your students build mental connections, find patterns, and remember information long after instruction ends.

Think about an image you may share with your students. A timeline in social studies, a visual cycle in science, or even a color-coded grammar example gives your students something concrete to connect with. Good visuals provide support for what students are learning. They give students a way to make sense of unfamiliar concepts or connect vocabulary to something they already know. Luckily, great visuals are fairly easy to find or create for the classroom. Whether it is an anchor chart, a diagram, or a visual checklist, visuals should be a key part of your lesson because they are highly connected to learning.

One visual checklist I have used is my Eye on the Target Problem Solving Stick. This visual cue helps students visually walk through their assignments as they problem solve. It’s a simple example of how vocabulary and standards can be differentiated visually, but that exact approach can support so many different subjects. If you want to explore more visual supports for problem-solving, you can take a look at Eye on the Target for additional ideas.

Using Auditory Modalities as Part of Multimodal Learning

Even in our highly visual world, listening is still a powerful learning tool. Spoken explanations, read-alouds, storytelling, and partner discussions all help your students make sense of content in a way that feels conversational and human. When you introduce a new topic through a story, or when your students rehearse their thinking out loud, they strengthen their comprehension and build confidence before ever putting pencil to paper.

One of the easiest ways to integrate auditory learning is through picture books or oral storytelling. These moments bring emotion, pacing, and clarity to the content. If you teach customary measurement conversions, the Land of Gallon story is a great example of how a straightforward narrative can anchor understanding in a memorable way. The more your students hear language wrapped around concepts, the more naturally they begin to talk about and internalize those ideas themselves.

Using Kinesthetic Modalities to Build Meaning

Movement is another essential layer of multimodal learning. Not because some of your students are labeled “kinesthetic learners,” but because physical engagement helps the brain connect ideas more deeply. When your students get up, manipulate objects, or interact with space, they build meaning in ways that worksheets alone just can’t replicate.

Human number lines are a wonderful example of kinesthetic learning. When your students physically step into the role of numbers, decimals, or rounding benchmarks, they suddenly understand the relationships between values much more clearly. Similarly, "build and compare" activities offer the same sense of discovery as your students use math tools, create models, and test their thinking with their hands. Vocabulary learning becomes more memorable when your students move between stations, act out words, or rotate through tasks that anchor meaning in both body and mind. If you’d like to try ready-made activities, make sure to grab a copy of the kinesthetic vocabulary supports.

Where Technology Fits into Multimodal Learning

Technology has quickly become one of the most natural pathways for multimodality. Your students intuitively understand digital spaces. Tech tools give us endless ways to blend visuals, audio, movement, and interaction. Your student might watch a short video model, use voice tools to explain their thinking, collaborate inside a digital document, sketch on a touchscreen, or build a diagram using an online template. All of these experiences offer rich layers of input and output that make ideas more accessible.

As AI tools become part of daily life, they also open up new multimodal entry points. Your students might ask AI to summarize a concept, generate an illustration, check an explanation, or model a process. When used thoughtfully, these tools don’t replace learning; they expand the modalities available to your students, so they can choose the pathway that helps them understand the content most clearly.

Ready to Plan Multimodal Lessons With Ease?

Incorporating these different techniques into your lessons does not have to be hard or time consuming.  Let's start with one misconception: You do NOT need to incorporate all of these into every lesson. Instead, start to think about your lessons and activities as a cluster or unit.  During the course of teaching a specific skill or concept, try to include as many of these as possible, if not all of them.  This helps to ensure that each student has multiple opportunities, in multiple ways, to connect with the information. 

Please don't let this thought discourage you. You are already doing some of this. As you introduce or teach a new skill, you usually talk and model or show examples. This hits visual and auditory modalities right away. Add a video to the mix for a technology addition, or connect it with a picture book read aloud to help explain the concept in a different way. Next comes the opportunity for students to practice. Aim for practice activities in different formats: a worksheet, hands-on and interactive activity, a partner game, a digital activity, or a write the room scavenger hunt. Not only do these connect with different modalities, but the change of activities will keep learning fresh and fun. Need to reteach? Try an activity that taps into a different modality than what you originally used. 

It doesn't have to be hard to use multimodal learning in your classroom; it just takes intent. As you change the way you think about lesson planning, it will become easier and easier until it is just second nature.

Ready to bring even more multimodal learning into your classroom? I’d love for you to explore the resources in my TPT store. Everything there is designed to help you plan lessons that naturally weave together different modalities so your students can interact with content in meaningful ways. From hands-on activities to visual supports and digital resources, you’ll find materials that make it easy to reach your diverse learners without adding extra stress to your planning time. 

A Modern Look at Learning Styles

Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experiences still matter, but not because they define who our students are. They matter because learning becomes stronger when ideas are experienced from multiple directions. A modern classroom thrives when our students are invited to see, hear, discuss, sketch, model, build, imagine, act out, and explore concepts across multiple modalities.

The goal is no longer to match instruction to a preferred “style” but to design lessons that naturally weave together different modes of thinking. When our students access content through multimodal learning, they stay present, curious, and ready to participate. They also build a deeper and more durable understanding because they’ve interacted with the content in more than one meaningful way.

Save for Later

If you want to come back to these ideas when you’re planning future lessons, save this post now. Multimodal learning is one of those topics that becomes more powerful the more you play with it. Having these examples on hand makes it so much easier to weave multiple modalities into your day.