ABSTRACT
This chapter presents research-based tactics and strategies for representing meaning. Fronting this chapter is a brief reference to the writing workshop and genre-based methodologies, because of their dominance in writing and their relation to some of the discussion of other strategies mentioned. Drawing on evidence that teachers lack confidence and a sense of competence in composing across multiple modalities, the first strategy focuses on activities teachers can engage in to foster their confidence and competence. Beyond this strategy, are strategies that emphasize the nature of engagements that teachers can offer to students. These strategies include finding the pleasures of representing meaning through providing choice, meaningful engagements, extended time and sharing compositional works. In terms of broadening and deepening composing, modality bootstrapping, where one compositional modality is used to complement and enlarge representational possibilities, is presented. In addition, a scaffolding framework is presented and exemplified through a variety of different examples of representational forms and engagements.
