What Is Multisensory Learning? Benefits, Examples & Teaching Strategies

Sarah Major, M.Ed. is passionate about working in harmony with a child's immaculate design to support their learning strengths. As a Title 1 Program Director and Designer, Sarah earned awards for creating her own multisensory educational resources that have now been sold in all 50 states and over 150 countries. Sarah’s materials combine all learning modalities into every lesson, so you can teach once and reach all.   

When I first began teaching, my goal was simple: I wanted every child in my classroom to have the opportunity to succeed.

But it quickly became clear that presenting information in only one way wasn't always enough. Some children needed to see what they were learning. Some benefited from saying and hearing it. Others made stronger connections when they could touch, build, write, trace, or move as they practiced.

Over time, I began intentionally combining these elements in my lessons. Instead of simply telling children something and expecting them to remember it, I looked for ways to make new information more concrete, meaningful, and memorable.

That approach became foundational to the resources we later developed at Child1st.

Today, we call it multisensory learning.

WHAT IS MULTISENSORY LEARNING?

Multisensory learning is an approach to instruction that intentionally engages more than one sense or mode of learning as students encounter and practice new information.

A child might:

• see a letter, word, pattern, picture, or diagram;
• hear and say a sound, word, rhyme, or explanation;
• touch or manipulate letters, objects, or other learning materials;
• write, trace, build, or draw what they are learning; and
• use purposeful body movement connected to the concept.

The goal isn't simply to add more activity to a lesson. Each element should help reinforce the same concept.

For example, movement that directly represents the meaning of a word can provide a useful memory connection. Moving around the room for no particular reason may be fun, but it doesn't necessarily strengthen the learning.

This distinction is important: multisensory instruction is most useful when the sensory experiences are meaningfully connected to what the child is learning.

How Does Multisensory Learning Work?

Multisensory lessons commonly combine four types of experiences.

Children naturally differ in how they take in, process, and remember information. Some rely heavily on visual information, while others connect more readily through sound, hands-on experiences, or movement. Multisensory teaching brings these pathways together so children have multiple ways to understand, practice, and remember what they are learning.

1. Visual — See It 

Visual elements can make abstract information more concrete and help children notice important patterns and relationships. 

Examples include:

• pictures and illustrations;
  
• letters and printed words;
• diagrams and graphic organizers;
• embedded visuals;
• color used purposefully;
• charts and maps; and
• visual patterns.

At Child1st, we often connect an abstract symbol with a meaningful visual. A letter, spelling pattern, number, or word is not simply accompanied by an unrelated picture—the visual is designed to draw attention to the information the child needs to remember.

2. Auditory — Hear It & Say It

Students also benefit from actively working with spoken language.

They might:

• say letter sounds;
• blend sounds aloud;
• read words or sentences aloud;
• repeat a spelling pattern;
• use rhyme or rhythm;
• explain an answer in their own words; or
• listen as a teacher models a sound, word, or concept.

In literacy instruction, listening and speaking can be deliberately connected with reading and writing. Multisensory phonics instruction, for example, may combine saying a sound, seeing its spelling, manipulating letters, and then reading or writing the resulting word.

3. Tactile — Touch It & Build It

Hands-on learning gives children an opportunity to physically interact with a concept.

Students might:

• build words with letter tiles;
• trace or write letters and words;
• manipulate counters for math;
• sort objects or cards;
• construct models;
• form letters or numbers; or
• physically arrange parts of a problem.

The hands-on component should support the skill being taught rather than simply provide an additional activity.

4. Kinesthetic — Move & Do It

Purposeful movement can provide another way to practice and reinforce learning.

Students might:

• use a hand motion connected with a sound;
• act out the meaning of a word;
• use fingers to represent sounds in a word;
• move objects while solving a problem;
• form a letter or concept with their bodies; or
• physically demonstrate a sequence.

Again, the key word is purposeful.

The movement should reinforce the information students are expected to remember and apply.

What Does Multisensory Learning Look Like?

Multisensory instruction doesn't have to be complicated. Here are several examples.

Learning a Letter and Its Sound

A child can:

See it: Look at the letter and a meaningful visual connected to its shape or sound.

Hear it: Listen to and say the letter sound.

Touch it: Trace or write the letter.

Move it: Use a purposeful motion associated with the sound or letter.

With resources such as the Child1st Alphabet, children can connect letters and sounds with meaningful visual, auditory, and movement-based supports. With practice, those supports can gradually be reduced as the child becomes able to recognize and use the letter independently.

Learning a High-Frequency Word

A child can:

See it: View the word with a meaningful visual that helps draw attention to the word.

Say it: Read and spell the word aloud.

Move it: Use a body motion connected to the word's meaning.

Recall it: Practice recognizing the word without the picture support.

Apply it: Read the word in phrases, sentences, and connected text.

This is the progression used with SnapWords®. The picture and movement serve as instructional supports rather than the end goal. As recognition develops, students transition to the plain printed word and apply it in reading.

Learning a Phonics or Spelling Pattern

Suppose children are learning a particular sound spelling.

They can:

See the spelling → hear and say the sound → build or write words containing it → read the words → spell the words.

A visual memory support or purposeful motion can reinforce the pattern while students practice connecting sounds with spellings and applying those connections to reading and writing.

Learning a Math Concept

Multisensory teaching isn't limited to reading.

When learning number combinations, for example, a child might:

See a visual representation of the quantity.

Touch and move manipulatives.

Say the number relationship aloud.

Write the corresponding equation.

Right-Brained Math uses visual and hands-on approaches to help children connect quantities and mathematical relationships with the abstract symbols used to represent them.

What Are the Benefits of Multisensory Learning?

Multisensory instruction can make learning more active and give children several meaningful ways to interact with new information.

It Makes Abstract Information More Concrete

Letters, phonemes, spelling patterns, written words, and mathematical symbols are abstract.

Pictures, objects, manipulatives, spoken language, writing, and purposeful movement can help make those concepts more tangible while students are learning them.

It Encourages Active Participation

Students aren't simply listening to information. They may be saying, writing, manipulating, reading, building, sorting, or demonstrating what they're learning.

That gives teachers and parents opportunities to observe what a child understands and where additional practice may be needed.

It Provides Opportunities for Practice and Reinforcement

Children often need repeated practice before a new skill becomes automatic.

Multisensory activities can provide varied ways to practice the same skill without changing the learning objective.

It Can Provide Scaffolding for Beginning and Struggling Readers

Multisensory techniques can provide additional support while students are learning a new literacy skill. Importantly, those supports should not become permanent crutches.

As students become proficient, the additional scaffolds can be reduced so that they ultimately perform the reading or spelling task independently. This gradual removal of multisensory supports is also recommended in literacy guidance from Reading Rockets and the International Dyslexia Association.

It Can Increase Engagement

Hands-on activities, movement, pictures, manipulatives, and active participation can make practice more engaging for children—particularly when those activities have a clear connection to what is being taught.

Multisensory Learning and Structured Literacy

Multisensory instruction can be incorporated into Structured Literacy, but the terms are not interchangeable.

Structured Literacy is characterized by instruction that is explicit, systematic, cumulative, and responsive to student performance. It directly teaches the structure of spoken and written language and provides guided practice and feedback. The International Dyslexia Association also describes hands-on and multimodal techniques as methods that can be used within Structured Literacy instruction.

Multisensory activities therefore can reinforce explicit literacy instruction.

They are not a replacement for phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, encoding, decodable reading, vocabulary, comprehension, or fluency practice.

For a struggling reader, the goal isn't simply to provide more sensory experiences. The goal is to use meaningful supports while explicitly teaching the literacy skills the student needs to learn.

How to Create a Multisensory Lesson

You don't need special training or an elaborate collection of materials to add multisensory elements to everyday teaching.

Start with one question:

What do I want the child to learn?

Then choose visual, auditory, tactile, or movement-based elements that directly reinforce that objective.

You do not have to force all four elements into every activity.

Use the combination that makes sense for the concept you're teaching.

The most important question is not:

“How many senses am I using?”

It is:

“Does each part of this activity help the child understand, remember, or apply the skill I'm teaching?”

Multisensory Teaching at Home

Parents can use the same principles without turning home into a classroom.

For reading and spelling, you might have your child:

• say sounds while building a word with letter tiles;
• trace a spelling pattern while saying its sound;
• use a meaningful motion while practicing a difficult word;
• read a newly learned word in a sentence or book; or
• explain what they just learned in their own words.

For math, children can manipulate real objects, draw quantities, explain their thinking aloud, and then connect those experiences to written numbers and equations.

The goal is meaningful practice, not more activities for the sake of being busy.

Multisensory Resources from Child1st

Multisensory teaching has been part of Child1st's approach from the beginning.

Our resources are designed to help teachers and parents connect visual information, spoken language, hands-on practice, and purposeful movement with the skill being taught.

Depending on what your child or students are learning, you can explore:

SnapWords® for high-frequency word recognition and practice
Sound Spelling for sound-spelling patterns, phonics, reading, and spelling
Child1st Alphabet for letter recognition and letter-sound connections
Easy-for-Me™ Reading for applying developing reading skills in connected text
Right-Brained Math for visual and hands-on approaches to mathematical concepts

These resources are designed to be used as supplements to explicit, systematic instruction, giving students additional ways to practice and reinforce what they are learning.

Helping Learning Make Sense

Multisensory learning is not about adding pictures, movement, or hands-on activities simply to make a lesson more entertaining.

It is about making purposeful connections.

When children can see, hear, say, touch, write, and move in ways that directly reinforce what they are learning, abstract information can become more concrete and practice can become more meaningful.

That principle has shaped Child1st resources from the beginning:

Make the learning visible. Make it meaningful. Give children opportunities to practice it. Then help them apply it independently.