Multimodal Practices in the Classroom

 

The multimodal activities I have thus far discussed in this blog have included the use of comics, video games, photography, and many other mediums of expression in order to strengthen students’ literacy skills (this post includes even more comics and adds literature circles to that as well). An understanding of multimodal literacy and its value of making literacy learning equitable is essential for modern teachers. Students who need to be challenged in reading and writing, whether they are gifted in this area or not, will benefit from inclusion of multimodal elements in praxis in the classroom.

In one article I will review (Dallacqua, 2020), students used a comic entitled The Black Death (World History Ink, 2009) to study the plague. The author notes that “even though comics are positioned to engage readers, especially those often struggling, scholarship contends that they are valuable for a “wide range of subjects and benefit various student populations, from hesitant readers to gifted students” (Carter, 2007, p. 1, as cited in Dallacqua, p. 170). The use of comics in classrooms has been researched and generally considered to be an effective multimodal engagement strategy, and not just for novelty purposes. The students were involved in a collaborative effort, though some had to be coaxed into doing group work because they preferred to keep to themselves (p 182). However, student reflections indicated that they enjoyed talking about each other’s different perspectives. The images in comics are open to interpretation, and thus are a tool to encourage collaborative discussion and critical thinking. The researchers also noted that the work “challenges commonly held beliefs around comics as structured for an individual reader” (p 170). One key to incorporating multimodal and nontraditional texts is to ask questions as the teacher participant in the article did; she asked students “what are you seeing and reading? Why is it important?” Questions such as these activate critical thinking by challenging students to identify artistic and academic purposes of texts, which pushes the use of comics in the classroom from novelty and a simple “hook” to meaningful text.

                In another article (Barone, 2019), fourth-grade gifted students participated in literature circles. The students were gifted, but not necessarily sophisticated readers, and many struggled with reading and writing because they were bilingual. The teacher participant in the article read the book Hoot, about endangered owl species out loud to the students while they followed along silently in their own personal copies so that all learners would be able to keep up with the story and have those barriers removed. The students in the small gifted classroom did not have time for extended reading in their regular classroom. In the literature circles, they had roles such as Character Trait Tracker and Visual Viewer (p 126), and drew pictures and wrote responses to the book. The teacher ensured that the book she chose had spaces for interpretation to challenge the thinking of her students (p 131), and she noted that as a result, students constantly inferred and “were not satisfied with just repeating what happened in the book” (p 132). Giving students roles, involving them in collaborative reading instead of individual reading, and allowing multimodal responses to the content ensured that they gleaned more from this type of lesson. The researcher noticed that the students “understood that text is not always sufficient to carry a message and without teacher direction included visual representations” (p 133).

                In a third article (Boche, 2015), a high school science teacher conducting a biology lesson used multimodal scaffolding to prepare her students to read college-level texts. While teaching about different species, she included a video clip from the movie The Lion King that explained the circle of life. This is an example of a prereading strategy and a multimodal scaffolding technique that was used for “expanding and providing different entry points in lessons and whole curriculum” (p 580). The students also created a Venn diagram when studying Life of Pi, as well as examine photographs. Multimodal scaffolding ensured that “students were required to transfer their learning from readings to other contexts, questions, experiential studies in the field, and variety of complex texts” (p 581).

                In the fourth and final article I will review (Pantaleo, 2019), the concept of creativity is explored, based on the creative habits of mind model (Lucas et. al., 2013, and Lucas, 2016). The researcher reviewed creative dispositions, or habits of mind, and creative products, and how multimodal classroom practices are an ideal vehicle for nurturing creativity in students. The participating students were a fourth-grade class that read picture books and then created their own. The researcher noted that “both formative and summative feedback regarding students’ creative processes, actions, and products is fundamental to their development, learning, and academic achievement” (p 25). Multimodal practices such as creating a storybook after reading and studying both the literary aspects of storybooks are supportive of both the notion of creative dispositions and creative products.

                I will conclude with a quote from one of the articles that succinctly describes the value of using photographs, paintings, videos, comics, and various other multimodal tools to engage and challenge students and encourage creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and comprehension: “Recognizing how multimodality can be used to motivate and engage students to work with these academic literacies, particularly complex texts, can help bridge what students do outside of school to aid in what they learn in school” (Boche, p 588). This illustrates the overarching importance of using multimodal practices to also allow students to connect their classroom learning to their personal lives and a greater purpose. Below, I will also include a picture of ideas for multimodal teaching tools as well as a link to an excellent blog post on multimodal assessments and reasons for teaching it from the University of Sydney.

https://educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au/teaching@sydney/multimodal-assessment-what-why-and-how/

References

Barone, D., & Barone, R. (2019). Fourth-grade gifted students participation in literature circles. Gifted Education International, 35(2), 121-135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261429418824120

Boche, B., & Henning, M. (2015). Multimodal Scaffolding in the Secondary English Classroom Curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(7), 579-590. Retrieved October 5, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44011182

Dallacqua, A. K. (2020). Reading Comics Collaboratively and Challenging Literacy Norms. Literacy Research and Instruction, 59(2), 169-190.

 Pantaleo, S. (2019). Creativity and elementary students' multimodal narrative representations. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, The, 42(1), 17-27.