ABSTRACT
Working in a classroom that places value on understanding and creating multimodal texts enables a shift in the pedagogic discourse around the three message systems of pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. Messages that students receive about themselves as learners—knowledgeable, capable, in control and with a voice—contribute to a positive view of themselves as literate and education as a place for them. This chapter draws on data from a number of primary classrooms (Years 3 and 5) and the teachers who have embedded multimodal literacy practices into these classrooms. This includes explicit teaching of multimodal texts and the grammars and affordances associated with these texts. It describes the practices that provided opportunities in the classrooms for students to develop semiotic understandings and how these practices reinforce engaging messages for students. The chapter draws on connections to the types of scaffolding and other strategies that the teachers employed to support student understandings of the written, oral, sound and visual semiotic systems that contribute to the construction of multimodal texts. It also draws attention to the advantages of technology and the technological affordances that enable students to manipulate and create their own monomodal and multimodal texts.
