In this paper, we explore the affordances of literature‐based, arts‐infused and digital media processes for students, as multimodal practices take centre stage in an English Language Arts unit on fractured fairy tales. The study takes up the challenge of addressing multimodal literacy instruction and research in ways that utilize a range of modalities. Incorporating the perspectives and multimodal texts of five students, Alvin, Adamma, Emmett, Layla and Yacoub, we highlight the highly supportive writing environment made possible for these fifth grade learners. The oral, embodied, visual, and written group explorations of the language of fairy tales, story and parody, found in fractured fairy tales, afforded the students numerous, rich opportunities to explore and experiment with language, which ultimately led to the production of individual fractured fairy tales written with a level of sophistication their teacher had not previously seen in their writing.

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Music engages children in language learning, offering them opportunities to understand and express their ideas and communicate with others in ways that go beyond words. This article, based on two ethnographically-framed studies and the use of two real-life vignettes, demonstrates how singing and musical experiences (e.g., composition, soundscapes, musical improvisation) have the power to enhance children's lexical acquisition and semantic knowledge at various levels of development. Results demonstrate that singing and musical experiences, whether biologically or socially shaped, provide opportunities to celebrate language and enhance young children's vocabulary building.

Drawing on case illustrations of a six-year-old child as he 'assembles' a digital world using Webkinz TM , this paper proposes an approach that researchers and educators might use to understand, analyse and critique multimodality. This multidisciplinary theoretical framework integrates new literacies, social semiotics and critical literacy perspectives. Data were collected during a broader three-week case study via a sideshadowing interview technique (McClay and Mackey, 2009), where the first author sat next to the child, making detailed research notes, interviewing him and taking screenshots of his digital productions. The findings suggest that authorship is rarely linear as authors continually remix, layer, embed and inter-animate semiotic resources as they assemble their sociocultural worlds and critical positions within these worlds.