Multimodal assessments: affording children labeled ‘at-risk’ expressive and receptive opportunities in the area of literacy

Abstract

Current literacy assessments are focused on a single mode of meaning-making (reading and writing, whether oral or written) and assume that literacy and language are ‘fixed systems’– comprised of discrete skills that can be taught and measured in isolation. This validation and privileging of a single mode of assessment are most culpable in children labeled ‘At-risk’, falling significantly behind those without this label. Many informal, multimodal assessments endeavor to give a more complete picture of children as literate beings. This study investigates what a teacher can learn from a diverse range of assessment forms and modes. In a fourth-grade self-contained classroom, students engaged in multimodal assessments and created multimodal portfolios. Four students labeled ‘At-risk’ were chosen for a deeper analysis. Students’ artifacts, interviews, and observations served as the main data sources. Both narrative analysis and analysis of narrative were utilized to generate a more complete narrative of the four students as meaning makers and communicators. The general findings suggest that these children labeled ‘At-risk’ were, in fact, able to engage in multimodal thinking and communication from a critical stance.

Keywords:

• Literacy practices
• elementary education
• multimodality
• social semiotic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID details

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4793-6143

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8065-9531