Composition Projects: Multimodal
Overview
For adolescent learners, the Composition process can become more robust, as learners begin to express ideas through multiple media, which includes visual, audio, and digital production. The skills needed for multimodal expression encompass digital literacy skills, which are increasingly important in today's world.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch a student's digital composition from Stonybrook University's digital storytelling site, which focuses on digital literacy and multimodal literacy. Youth combine images, audio, and video to represent their thoughts on different topics and share their perspectives.
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 Inklewriter allows learners to create web-based interactive stories and share them with the world. Learners can write argumentative pieces, make-your-own-adventure style stories, and writing multiple endings to a story from different genres to improve their understanding of genres.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Active Learning Strategies
Physically acting out a text or enacting major themes from texts enhances reading comprehension, particularly as texts become more complex.
When students express information visually, they are activating more cognitive processes while problem solving and increasing their experience with alternate texts.
When preparing for and debating with peers, students analyze, form, and express verbal arguments, fostering their critical thinking and literacy skills.
During reading, giving students the opportunity to explain their thinking process aloud allows them to recognize the strategies they use, solidify their comprehension, and move knowledge into their Long-term Memory.
Visiting places connected to classroom learning provides opportunities to deepen understanding through firsthand experiences.
Games help students practice their literacy skills in a fun, applied context.
When students write from a non-dominant or marginalized perspective, they consider and give voice to points of view that are often missing.
Project-based learning (PBL) actively engages learners in authentic tasks designed to create products that answer a given question or solve a problem.
Response devices boost engagement by encouraging all students to answer every question.
