Increasing Student Engagement through Message Abundancy
How can Message Abundancy Increase Student Engagement in My Classroom?
Message Abundancy provides an opportunity for teachers to examine their current practice and expand their ways of presenting information in more than one way. The inventory we created for you below can help achieve that goal (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Message Abundancy as Multimodal Learning
1. Visual Representations: Providing access to meaning visually
Use labeled diagrams, anchor charts, timelines, and flowcharts.
Color-code key ideas or language features (e.g., verbs, connectors, noun groups).
Display dual coding: image + key disciplinary phrase (e.g., “cause → effect”).
Show sentence structures or patterns visually (frames, arrows, or icons).
2. Gestural and Embodied Meaning: Involving the body in the learning process
Use hand motions to represent relationships (e.g., cause → effect, increase).
Act out processes or relationships (life cycles, historical events, equations).
Invite students to physically model a system or phenomenon (act out molecules).
3. Spoken Language: Representing messages orally
Paraphrase complex text aloud using accessible, discipline-specific talk.
Chunk information into digestible chunks (giving directions, doing read-alouds, etc.)
Use echo reading, choral repetition, or call-and-response to highlight meaning.
Encourage talk that mirrors written forms (“So what that means is…”).
Use tone, emphasis, and pacing intentionally to draw attention to meaning.
4. Tactile and Multisensory Experiences: Learning through touch and physical interactions
Use hands-on materials (manipulatives, models, textured surfaces, 3D objects) to represent concepts.
Let students build, sort, or move objects to represent relationships (e.g., organism cards in a food chain, magnetic poles for force and motion).
Incorporate touch-based exploration (e.g., feeling the texture of rock types, using sand or clay to model erosion).
Provide interactive stations where students can handle, arrange, or construct meaning physically before representing it in talk or writing.
Encourage multisensory experiences—linking texture, shape, or motion to abstract concepts (“Smooth equals even surface; jagged equals rough terrain”).
5. Written Language: Presenting messages in writing
Display mentor sentences and unpack their structure.
Build shared word walls around key concepts (not just vocabulary).
Model how visuals connect to written explanation (“This diagram shows how…”).
Jointly construct texts with students to show how ideas expand into sentences.
6. Symbolic and Mathematical Representations: Pairing equations with verbal explanations
Make connections between equations and verbal representations explicit.
Translate symbols or data tables into everyday and then technical language.
Ask students to narrate what each symbol, graph, or pattern means.
7. Technological and Media Modes: Leveraging technology
Layer meaning using slides, interactive whiteboards, or short video clips.
Use images, captions, and voiceovers strategically—not decoratively.
Have students create short multimodal summaries (voice + image + text).
8. Metalinguistic Talk: Drawing attention to language
Pause to make language visible (“Notice how this phrase shows comparison…”).
Use think-alouds to unpack meaning (“When I see as a result, I know…”).
Encourage students to gesture, sketch, or restate to check for understanding.
What’s one new practice I’ll try in my next unit to make meaning more abundant?
Key Takeaways:
Multimodal Learning Through Message Abundancy:
Beneficial to all learners, but essential for Multilingual learners.
Does not replace text with images but uses all of the modes strategically and intentionally
Moves beyond simplifying language → instead amplifies language
Maintains intellectual rigor by providing multiple entry points.
Does not lower expectations but provides multiple entry points into the same message.
Ensures students interact with content in varied, strategic ways (not just listening or translating).
Next Steps:
Take the Message Abundancy Inventory wheel and examine your teaching using the following questions to guide your reflection:
Which of these modes do I use consistently and feel comfortable with?
Which do I tend to neglect (e.g., embodiment, gesture, modeling language)?
How can I move beyond visuals as replacements for language to use them as bridges to teach language?
Download our Message Abundancy in a Unit: 5 Instructional Steps Resource!
-
Boryga, A. (2023, January 9). Small Shifts to Limit ‘Teacher Talk’ and Increase Engagement Guiding. Edutopia https://www.edutopia.org/article/limit-teacher-talk-increase-student-engagement-achievement/
Brisk, M. E., & Zisselsberger, M. (2010). “We’ve let ’em in on the secret”: Using SFL theory to improve the teaching of writing to bilingual learners. In T. Lucas (Ed.), Teacher preparation for linguistically diverse classrooms: A resource for teacher educators (pp. 111–126). Routledge.
Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M. J. (2008). Reading in secondary content areas: A language-based pedagogy. University of Michigan Press.
Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111
Gaunt, A., & Stott, C. (2019). Transform teaching and learning through talk: The oracy imperative. Rowman & Littlefield.
Gibbons, P. (2006). Bridging discourses in the ESL classroom: Students, teachers and researchers. Continuum.
Gibbons, P. (2014). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom (2nd ed.). Heinemann.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1993). Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education, 5(2), 93–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/0898-5898(93)90026-7
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge.
Ross, K. (2019, September 30). Ghosts in the classroom: Insights into passive disengagement in the middle years. EduResearch Matters (AARE).
Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004). The language of schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Schmidt, M., Benzing, V., Wallman-Jones, A., Mavilidi, M., Lubans, D. Revalds. & Paas, F. (2019). Embodied learning in the classroom: Effects on primary school children's attention and foreign language vocabulary learning. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 43 45-54.
Tancredi, H., Killingly, C., & Graham, L. J. (2024, July 17). “My brain leaves the room”: What happens when teachers talk too much. Queensland University of Technology – RealFocus.
