Multimodal Literacy Portfolios: Expressive and Receptive Opportunities for Children Labeled "At-Risk"

Current literacy assessments are focused on a single mode of meaning-making (reading and writing, whether oral or written) and assume that literacy and language are "fixed systems"-- comprised of discrete skills that can be taught and measured in isolation. This validation and privileging of a single mode of assessment has resulted in children labeled "At-risk" falling significantly behind those without this label. This study investigates what a teacher can learn from a diverse range of assessment forms and modes. In a fourth-grade self-contained classroom, students engaged in multimodal assessments and created multimodal portfolios. Five students labeled "At-risk" were chosen for a deeper analysis. Students' artifacts, interviews, and observations served as the main data sources. Both narrative analysis and analysis of narrative were utilized to generate a more complete narrative of these five students as meaning makers and communicators. The general findings suggest that these children labeled "At-risk" were, in fact, able to engage in multimodal thinking and communication from a critical stance.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc984127
Date05 1900
CreatorsYoung, Whitney
ContributorsWickstrom, Carol D., Mathis, Janelle, Patterson, Leslie, Revelle, Carol L.
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatvi, 202 pages, Text
RightsPublic, Young, Whitney, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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