Literacy 4-6

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Composition Projects: Multimodal

Overview

Expressing ideas through visuals and audio, and understanding others' ideas in these forms, is as critical in today's world as traditional reading and writing. These multimodal compositions can also increase learners' Motivation because they resemble the real-life texts they encounter out of school.

Use It in the Classroom

Watch how this teacher explores summary paragraphs with students using a multimodal approach that includes blogs and podcasts. Being able to compose in many ways supports student ownership, in turn increasing Motivation.

Students practice digital literacy skills, important aspects of 21st century learning, as they create multimodal compositions. Having students share their compositions with peers and view others' projects can also help expand their Social Awareness & Relationship Skills.

Design It into Your Product

Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.

Watch how KidBlog provides a global platform for students to engage in digital authorship. Students share their ideas via videos, photos, and written explanations, and their blogs are available to classrooms across the United States and globally, which increases their Motivation to write and broadens their Literacy Environment.

Product designers can build in examples of messages shared in different ways for students to practice their Metacognition in making choices about which modalities to use for communicating messages most effectively. Digital platforms can also be powerful global shared spaces, where students can find Social Supports in the form of authentic audiences for their work and develop global awareness and understanding by seeing others' compositions.

View References

Resources

Below are additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.

Examples

Creating Multimodal Texts

A toolkit for creating multimedia texts

Examples

Multimodal Apps

Comprehensive list of apps for multimodal composition

Examples

Multimodal Composing

Ten most commonly asked questions about multimodal composing

Examples

Multimodal Compositions

Tips and pitfalls to avoid for multimodal projects