Blog 5: Multimodal Texts

I created a Multimodal text using PowerPoint in order for children to retell the story of ‘The Gruffalo’. Prior to the lesson, I had not thought of using PowerPoint as a means for engaging with digital literacy, however I found it to be a simplistic yet effective way to create digital texts which would transfer into classrooms with ease, which children would be able to engage with to create new texts of their own or to interact with pre-existing ones. The National Curriculum (1999) states that children should be taught literacy skills through the use of ICT based texts, and Medwell, Moore, Wray and Griffiths (2012) note how ‘electronic texts are becoming more prevalent’ in every-day lives of pupils and so harnessing these types of text in our teaching is extremely important in order to keep motivation and engagement levels high and to keep learners ‘mentally active’ (Medwell et al, 2012). Electronic texts offer ‘literal interaction between texts and readers’ which printed text cannot (Medwell et al, 2012), and although printed text does and will continue to hold great precedence within classrooms, it seems only natural to progress into more digital forms of literacy as texts are ever-evolving and it seems impractical to ignore such changes.

Department for Education and Employment (1999) The National Curriculum, Handbook for primary teachers in England Qualifications and Curriculum Authority: London

Medwell, J., Moore, G., Wray, D. and Griffiths, V. (2012) Primary English Knowledge and Understanding London: Learning Matters