Visual & Multimodal | The Belonging Project

Visual and Multimodal Teaching Strategies

This course explores how visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modes can be integrated into instructional design to support access, engagement, and understanding for all learners. Multimodal strategies move beyond text-based approaches, offering students multiple ways to connect with and express learning. The course emphasizes how intentionally designed visuals and sensory-rich tools can enhance inclusivity for students with diverse needs, including language learners and students with disabilities.

Start Here

Welcome to the course! This learning experience is designed to help you explore inclusive education through a blend of practical strategies and powerful storytelling. Before diving into the course content, your first step is to choose the story that will guide your learning.

About This Course

This course supports you in building inclusive, flexible learning environments that recognize and amplify the strengths of every learner. While you’ll deepen your understanding through interactive learning interludes, everything begins with story.

Each course is anchored in a set of narrative case studies—realistic, practice-based stories that illuminate inclusive strategies in action. These stories will help you reflect, connect, and see how the course concepts apply in real school contexts.

Choose Your Story

Each story features:

A Prologue to set the scene
Four Chapters that trace growth, tension, and change
An Epilogue to reflect on learning and impact

Choose one story to follow throughout the course. Pick the one that most closely matches your role, context, or interests. This story will provide a consistent lens as you move through the learning interludes and activities.

Not sure which to choose? No problem. You can always return to this page to explore other stories. Many learners choose to follow more than one story to see how inclusive practices come to life in different settings.

What Happens Next?

Once you’ve chosen your story:

If you're learning independently, head to the Course Content section and begin with Learning Interlude 1.
If you're learning with a facilitator, they’ll guide you through the journey using the facilitation materials provided.

You're ready to begin. Scroll down to explore the stories and pick the one that will guide your path through the course.

Amara's Story: The Multimodal Social Studies Unit

Meet Amara, a passionate and reflective Grade 4 teacher at Harvest Hill Elementary School. New to the school and eager to build meaningful connections with her students, Amara quickly realizes that her classroom is home to a richly diverse group of learners. May of her students are multilingual, some with ADHD or learning differences, and others who simply don’t connect with traditional, text-heavy instruction. When she launches her first major social studies unit, she’s met with blank stares, off-task behavior, and growing frustration. Despite her best intentions, she sees how a one-size-fits-all approach is leaving many students behind.

Feeling disheartened, Amara begins to question the role of modality in her teaching. Could the problem be not just what she is teaching, but how? A professional learning workshop on multimodal strategies opens a new path forward. She begins experimenting with layered input: visual timelines, physical modeling, and storytelling techniques. As students become more animated and participatory, Amara leans deeper into multimodal design.

Throughout the unit, she redesigns assessments to include sketch-noting, tableau performances, and video explainers. Students who rarely spoke up begin to lead discussions. Visual prompts and task anchors support greater independence and reduce the need for constant redirection. By the end of the unit, Amara’s classroom feels transformed, not because the content changed, but because the pathways into the content were multiplied.

Her culminating museum walk isn’t just a celebration of student learning. It's a turning point in Amara’s teaching identity. She no longer sees multimodal strategies as add-ons for “struggling” students. Instead, she sees them as core to creating a classroom where all learners can access, express, and feel proud of their growth.

Prologue - The Text Wall ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - First Shifts in Vision ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - A Unit Reimagined ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Creative Expression ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Visuals for Independence ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - The Museum Walk ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Wayfinder Middle School: A Sensory-Aware Classroom

At Wayfinder Middle School, a diverse and vibrant learning community, staff have long wrestled with rising behavior referrals, student shutdowns, and a persistent undercurrent of tension in the school environment. While educators genuinely care and strive to support each learner, they begin to realize that traditional classroom designs ((bright fluorescent lights, rigid seating, text-heavy instruction, and cluttered walls) might be adding to students’ overwhelm instead of easing it.

It starts with a hallway. One particularly loud transition between periods sparks a conversation among a small group of teachers: Why do some students leave the classroom more dysregulated than when they came in? This question leads to deeper inquiry into the connection between sensory input, regulation, and student engagement. Through collaboration and curiosity, a team begins to explore the concept of multimodal, sensory-aware design, not as a strategy for students with identified needs only, but as a foundation for inclusive teaching.

With administrative support, they visit a nearby classroom that has embedded regulation-aware strategies into daily practice. What they see sparks both inspiration and urgency. They return to Wayfinder ready to make meaningful shifts, not just by adding fidgets or changing seating, but by rethinking how sensory input is intentionally designed, how students can move and access information, and how instruction can respond to their emotional states.

Over time, their classrooms become spaces where students choose seating that supports their needs, engage through tactile and movement-based activities, and rely on visual supports to guide their learning. Students begin to self-regulate, participate more fully, and feel ownership over their learning environment. Staff begin to notice that discipline conversations are replaced by planning conversations. What began as a response to “behaviors” becomes a holistic rethinking of classroom culture—one grounded in safety, clarity, and trust.

Prologue - The Overstimulated Hallways ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Looking Through a New Lens ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Designing for Calm ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Hands-On Engagement ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Tools for Independence ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - Beyond Behavior ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Leo's Story: A Voice Beyond Words

Leo, a non-speaking Grade 5 student, arrives at Riverstone Elementary School mid-year. His previous learning experiences have been fragmented, with support often focused on managing behaviors or providing basic care rather than nurturing communication, agency, and academic inclusion. At Riverstone, however, a new team of educators is determined to do things differently.

From the start, Leo is attentive and curious. He listens closely during lessons, tracks classroom routines, and explores learning materials with clear interest, but he doesn’t speak, and his gestures are often missed or misunderstood. His new teachers, Ms. Howell and Mr. Tran, feel a mixture of hope and hesitation. They’ve never supported a student who uses augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and they worry about how to make complex subjects like science accessible without overwhelming him, or themselves.

Their uncertainty becomes a catalyst for growth. With the help of a speech-language pathologist and the learning support team, they begin to see communication not as a set of words, but as a dynamic and multimodal process. They learn about objects of reference, visual symbols, simplified text, touch-based AAC, and the importance of consistency and predictability. What begins as a plan to “support Leo” soon evolves into a broader redesign of classroom communication for all learners.

As visuals become embedded in science labs, instructions, schedules, and group tasks, Leo begins to light up. He uses symbols, objects, gestures, and buttons to show understanding and share ideas. His classmates respond with growing empathy and recognition. Slowly, the classroom shifts, not to accommodate Leo, but to include him. By the end of the unit, he’s not just participating—he’s leading. And his teachers are no longer asking, Can Leo do this? They’re asking, How can we design so everyone does?

Prologue - The Quiet Observer ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Learning New Languages ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Designing Entry Points ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Group Work, New Voices ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Visuals for Agency ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - Leading the Lab ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Jin's Story: A Newcomer Learns with His Hands

Jin, a recent immigrant from South Korea, joins the Grade 6 class at Harvest Hill Elementary School in the middle of the school year. With limited English proficiency and little familiarity with Canadian classroom routines, he enters each day quietly, eyes down, barely speaking. His teacher, Ms. Cameron, wants to support him but feels unsure of how to balance language learning with curriculum coverage. Jin’s math scores from his previous school are strong, but he seems hesitant to participate, even when tasks seem nonverbal. The barrier isn’t ability. It’s access.

At first, Ms. Cameron assumes that more one-on-one support is the answer. But Jin continues to withdraw. When she attends a professional learning session on multimodal instruction, she begins to wonder if it’s not about simplifying language but about diversifying modes. What if Jin could learn through doing, seeing, touching, and moving?

With that mindset, the classroom begins to shift. Gestures and visuals accompany spoken directions. Lessons integrate manipulatives and tactile models. Vocabulary is introduced through visual word banks and dual-language supports. Slowly, Jin begins to lean in, then participate. His thinking, once hidden behind the silence of a new language, becomes visible through models, diagrams, and peer collaboration.

By the end of the unit, Jin is confidently sharing his learning through movement, drawing, and even a narrated video in his home language. His journey isn’t just one of language acquisition. It's a story of how multimodal design can remove barriers, honor identity, and allow students to show what they know in ways that feel natural and empowering.

Prologue - The Language Barrier ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Welcome Through Movement ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Making Connections Visible ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Showing What He Knows ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Gaining Confidence ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - Multilingual Pride ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Dana's Story: Coaching for Clarity and Impact

Dana is a central office instructional coach with a background in both inclusive education and visual learning design. As part of her role, she visits classrooms across the school division—some bustling with beautifully crafted anchor charts and visuals, others minimal or overly cluttered. She notices a concerning pattern: despite the increased emphasis on visual learning, many classrooms are unintentionally overwhelming students, especially those with learning disabilities, ADHD, and executive functioning challenges.

In some cases, visuals are being used excessively, with too many charts crowding walls and slides filled with icons, fonts, and colors that confuse more than clarify. In others, visuals are sparse, missing crucial opportunities to support student comprehension. Dana realizes the issue isn’t whether visuals are used but how and why. She begins to wonder: how can she help teachers design with intention, aligning visual supports with cognitive science and Universal Design for Learning?

Through a series of informal learning sessions and embedded coaching, Dana supports teachers in distinguishing between decorative visuals and those that truly support understanding and independence. Together, they explore strategies for reducing visual noise, integrating movement, and creating shared systems that support student agency. Rather than prescribing a single method, Dana models reflection, co-design, and iterative improvement.

By the end of the year, Dana has helped shift not just the look of classrooms but the mindset around design. Teachers now think about visuals as tools for inclusion and independence, rather than just decoration or display. Dana collects the many creative practices she’s seen and builds a resource bank rooted in real classrooms, ready to share across the division. Her story reflects the power of coaching to build clarity, capacity, and connection.

Prologue - Visual Noise ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Introducing the Why ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Clearing the Clutter ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Learning Through Movement ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Systems That Support ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - A Toolkit for All ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )