Three Levels of Support for Every Learner

Three components of literacy are multiliteracies, new literacies, and multimodality. For a better understanding, let’s look closely at what each of these levels of literacy means.

Multiliteracies

Multiliteracies focuses on the growing range of literacy skills required by new technologies and various forms of communication. Multiliteracies takes into consideration the social, cultural, and technological changes that impact literacy. Utilizing multiliteracies involves integrating multimodal “text”. This can be in the form of audio, images, sound, pictures or graphics, or film.

How can multiliteracies might be used in literacy interventions for students:

• Combining print with audio can be a powerful tool. This could look like a class reading together and listening to an audiobook simultaneously to ensure students are understanding the text through two different senses (sight and sound).
• Utilizing film can increase student understanding. In addition to a text, the teacher could provide different film or theater adaptations to show students throughout the reading to help bring the text to life.
• Sharing art and comparing different artistic depictions, if relevant, from paintings to sculptures to music, also provides space for multiliteracies in the classroom. Comparing allusion and meaning behind art and text can help foster student understanding and connection based on student interest.

New Literacies

New Literacies incorporates students’ out-of-school literacy practices, particularly those linked to popular culture, into classroom teaching. It references the digital impact of how students are engaging with text, changing how they read and write. Technology and media can have a great impact on new literacies and the changes that are taking place for students.

How can new literacies be used in the classrooms:

• Students could create a text thread from two characters that showcases their relationship. For example, students could write a text message thread between two characters to show relationships between characters, characterization, or plot. This can be a modern way to check for understanding.
• Many students engage with social media in one form or another. A teacher could have their students create a fictional Instagram post, with an image, caption, and hashtags, that are relevant to a specific character, scene, or chapter.
• Communicating through images and minimal text is also trending. Using Graphic Interchange Format, or more commonly referred to as GIFs, or Meme’s teachers could have their students convey an important scene from a text.

Multimodality

Multimodality highlights the significance of using and understanding various modes of communication—such as text, images, sound, and gestures—these modes should interact with each other with the goal of creating a dynamic learning experience.

How can multimodality be used as literary interventions for students:

• Use the think, pair, share method. Students have individual time to think. Then they can orally share with a partner and listen to their responses. Lastly, the class comes together to share the individual and pair related conversations.
• Have a graphic organizer that students complete prior to a class discussion, Socratic seminar, or debate gives students time to prepare, show their work, and have a reference point for the conversation.
• Use some form of kinetic movement to help support student learning. For example, having students work in small groups to complete tasks around the room, like an escape room, working together to solve puzzles and gather clues. When a group has completed one task, they can move to the next station with the goal of visiting each station and keeping track of the answers from each station.

Teachers should see increased engagement by implementing multiliteracies, new literacies, and multimodality as literacy intervention strategies. Incorporating different types of communication and technology that are both print and digital, recognizing understanding, applying literacies that students are interacting with, and relying on levels of communication that are multifaced to increase clarity and understanding.

These three pieces of literacy lay the groundwork for creating successful literacy instruction that makes learning relevant, meaningful, and accessible for students of all levels, with different interests, and unique learning styles.