Multimodality, Margarent Atwood and Modern times (just for the alliteration)

Margaret Atwood’s short story “Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother is rich both in terms of narrative and multimodal possibilities. Because of its quilted nature—its interweaving of a multitude of stories—one way might be to come up with a histogram charting, chronologically, the occurrence of the stories that the protagonist’s mother tells in the short story. Students could get pertinent quotes from the story and arrange them according to the order that they occur in the mother’s life. Not only would this be multimodal, but it would also require the students to study the text thoroughly. I've provided an example (very very rough draft) of what such a graphic organizer might look like.

If there was more time, it could even be possible to get students to create a histogram and fill it up pictures representing the various stages and incidents of the mother’s life. They would have to justify and provide their rationale for the pictures that they’re using in reference to the text.  

This activity got me thinking and returning to the question of the tension between multimodality and the importance of keeping the text front and centre in the classroom. It might perhaps be possible to get students to engage with excerpts from the text, say one particular scene from Hamlet for example and set them a multimodal activity (pictorial representation, shooting a short film, creating a diorama etc.) that they have to envision from their perspective. This would maintain the centrality of the text while at the same time engaging the students’ multimodal perspectives.

So perhaps the question shouldn’t be if the text is important (it is always important) but how to set multimodal activities that engage the students without letting them forget about the importance of the text.