Multimodalities

Multimodality can be a significant platform for the creation of opportunities for agency and empowerment in the classroom, which in turn become gateways to the development of multiple literacies in students. As Liz mentioned, this particular excerpt presents the life of the narrator’s mother in small vignette-like sections. One practical way to assess students’ understanding and interpretation of the text is to get them to narrate the story through digital storytelling. Students can create short movies composing of still photos, scanned images and documents, short videos, music and sound effects.

As I read the text, I felt that it would be interesting to watched it being performed as soliloquies  in the classroom. Or even as performative pieces where students can present in groups their interpretation of a particular life event as depicted in the text. (E.g. A narrator narrates while the other students act out the narration in mime).

I think Brennan’s histogram idea is very applicable and practical as well. It is imaginative in the sense that students are required to know the text well (be able to pick out relevant quotes) and at the same time weave in pictorial/ visual sources of compose their histogram.

I think multimodal ways of teaching opens up  a platform for learning and acquiring different kinds of literacies beyond language itself, as students can articulate and are encouraged to convey meaning by designing and transforming word to image and vice versa. As  multimodality is incorporated into the learning process, it would help advance learning across different spaces.