Multiple Literacies and Multimodal Texts – reflection of the implications of this session on my future
practice
It is apparent that in multimodal texts a particular set of
reading skills are needed to fully engage and comprehend them, ‘many books and other
media now available in schools cannot be read by attention to writing alone’
(UKLA, 2004:5). Particularly inferential and deductive skills are needed to
make sense of for examples picture books which use words and pictures combined
to depict the story. As teachers it is our role to ensure children are equipped
with these skills to access these texts, UKLA (2004, 18) states ‘what is on
offer in the classroom influences what children are able to achieve in
constructing these texts’, therefore it is important to provide
multimodal texts in the classroom. It was interesting in the seminar to look
closely about the knowledge we have when accessing these texts and what we do
to engage in them, such as the use of layout features, different fonts,
illustrations, and colours all used for purpose. Discussing multimodal texts
with children makes explicit the purpose of these features ‘and is likely to have an impact on their use of
different modes and media for specific purposes’ (UKLA, 2004: 18). This was
made more explicit to me whilst creating my own multimodal text using power point
and the thought process I went through in selecting different effects for
purpose in my story.
I totally agree that it is important to have different texts available to children in the classroom adn that what we offer the children reflects their ability to connect with different modes of texts. With incorporating image, text and layout features etc as you mentioned within a piece of text I wonder whether the quality would be effected as there would be a lot of different area of focus?
ReplyDeleteI also like how you looked into ways of making it cross curricular - the way that incorporating text and image into a text reveals more about the learning.
This is an interesting point and could be a challenge, there may need to be an explicit focus on one specific aspect at a time to gain more depth in understanding. However this could also be true in children creating their own multimodal texts there may be too many aspects to focus on to get a balance which creates meaning for example when I created my own multimodal text I over focused on perfecting the layout that I did not manage to complete it.
DeleteI also agree that there are numerous benefits to having a wide range of texts available in the classroom. However, as a teacher, I would be intrigued to know which kinds of texts would be most effective and how this is reflected in the NC.
ReplyDeleteI agree the quality may be affected due to the different elements to think about. When I created my PowerPoint story I spent little focus on the text as I was focussing on the pictures and layout . To guide children I would use a success criteria check list so the children are aware that there is a balance between the text and layout. This would also help them to think about all the different features of PowerPoint they can use to construct meaning .
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