Putting Multiliteracies Into Practice: Digital Storytelling for Multilingual Adolescents in a Summer Program

Abstract

In this article we demonstrate how we created a context in which digital storytelling was designed and implemented to teach multilingual middle school students in the summer program sponsored by a local nonprofit organization, the Latin American Association, in a city in the southeastern United States. While implementing the notion of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996) In this article we demonstrate how we applied the theoretical concept of multiliteracies to a pedagogical practice. We describe how we, three volunteer teachers from a university, engaged 12 adolescent multilingual students in the multiliteracies practice of digital storytelling (i.e., multimedia composing that consists of texts, images, and sounds to tell stories) during a summer program sponsored by the Latin American Association (LAA) in a city in the southeastern United States. Each summer, teacher candidates in our English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher education program offer individual tutoring to students at the LAA. In summer 2012, university faculty and the LAA staff members met to discuss goals to accomplish in our partnership in general and in tutoring in particular. During the meeting, the LAA staff asked us to make sure that our teacher candidates emphasized several critical issues during tutoring such as the importance of first language (L1) or heritage language development, positive identity construction, and 21st-century literacies development. We, two faculty members and a doctoral student, volunteered to design and teach a class in which these critical issues could be discussed with multilingual adolescent students, and the LAA staff members allowed us to design a class that could be part of their summer program. We set out to design the Digital Storytelling Class in order: (a) to examine how a theoretical framework (i.e., multiliteracies) could be translated into teaching multilingual adolescents; and (b) to create a context in which students could explore their multiple literacies and identities using multiple semiotic modes and resources (e.g., visuals, sound, gesture, gaze, and spatial concepts). In the following sections, we explain the theoretical framework that we drew on for designing and conducting our multiliteracies curriculum (i.e., digital storytelling lessons), followed by a detailed description of each session in which students engaged in digital storytelling practice. In the conclusion, we discuss how our pedagogical approach can be adapted to other ESL/EFL settings.

Teachers' Integration of Multimodality Into Classroom Practices for English Language Learners

“…One of the study's strengths lies in that it reports on the teachers' actual employment of multimodality in the existing curriculum, especially in content area classes, in contrast to previous studies that have described teachers' future lesson plans that embed multimodality (e.g., Thompson, ) or teachers' perceptions about the approach (e.g., Ajayi, ). Moreover, the teachers' orchestration of multiple modes in various in‐class projects and tasks rather than in one common form of multimodal practices (i.e., digital video composing) as explored in many studies (Angay‐Crowder et al., ; Hull & Nelson, ; Miller, ; Rance‐Roney, ) expands the discussion about multimodal practices in in‐school contexts. Last, the study has revealed the notion of intertextuality—ELLs returning to and practicing content and linguistic knowledge repeatedly, yet with a difference—as a useful framework for TESOL educators (Kress, ).…”

Multilingual Education and Family Language Policy

“…The term Multimodal pedagogies covers various forms of communication in learning environments connected to multimodality, or multiple modes, of meaning making, which refers to such things as body language, gestures, activities with visual and audial substances etc., yet, first, with media and technologies. Students may fill in their reports and presentations as creative multiliteracy texts (Angay-Crowder et al 2013). Positive pedagogy (O'Brien & Blue, 2017) affirms that success and positive learning experiences, cognitions and emotions make students flourish at school.…”

Digital Storytelling: A District Initiative for Academic Literacy Improvement

“…To understand how district training is translated to actual practice and its effects on student learning, we conducted a small case study in one participating 12th‐grade English language arts class in which the teacher is also a DIGICOM trainer. Although DST is used to teach various subjects in the PSUSD, prior work indicated that DST is particularly effective for student learning in English language arts classrooms (Angay‐Crowder, Choi, & Yi, ). On a weekly basis for two months, we observed two classes taught by the same teacher using the same ERWC curriculum for both classes.…”