Towards multiple literacies at school: a framework for the use of
etc.) in logic sequences; play memory, board and movement games; transfer information from one semiotic system to another, from one genre to another;
reflect on language and learning; design information posters and leaflets using technology; organize an exhibition in the school to share with the rest of the school community; etc.
The tasks mentioned above were used in the teaching sequences so that children took up different roles throughout the classes. These roles are the ones proponed by Anstey and Bull (2006: 118):
a. Text user: (TU) children use texts to communicate.
b. Meaning maker :(MM) children understand the meaning of a text in a literal way or inferring its meanings.
c. Code breaker: (CB) children infer codes from different semiotic systems to understand meanings.
d. Text analysts (TA) children analyze a text to understand how it works, how it was built and how attitudes and values are conveyed.
Figure 1 shows the didactic model in action. This chart corresponds to the first unit of the Project, designed around the topic: The city, the country. The final production of the unit consisted of the development of a blog in which children uploaded written productions and dramatizations of the stories. The children's families were invited to enter the blog and leave their comments (in English or Spanish).
Figure 1 Dimensions
Materials
Analogic literacy dimension Story: Iris and Walter by Ellissa Haden Guest.
Poem: I like by Mary +Anne Hoberman
Story:
Country mouse, city mouse.
www.kizclub.com/level3.htm Website on milk production:
www.moomilk.com/ tour.htm Webquest of the site
Film: Ratatouille (selection of scenes) Digital literacy
dimension
Media literacy dimension
Aims and roles of learners
Develop pleasure for reading a story. (TU) Identify textual structure of a story and some linguistic resources of the writer (dialogues, idiomatic expressions, grammatical resources) (TA)Infer meaning from illustrations (CB).Infer implicit ideas from the discourse of characters (MM).
Transfer from one discourse genre to another, from one semiotic system to another. (TU, CB, TA)
Develop an awareness of the media of multimedia materials (sound, image, written text) (TA) Develop an appreciation of the value of internet to look for information to learn. (TA) Interpret information in a written text with the help of the images of a digital text. (MM – CB) Develop strategies of hypertext using the links that appear in the web site (TA).
Understand the symbols or icons and the use of colour and underlining in digital texts. (TA) Look for specific information (scanning)(TU)
Develop a global understanding of the aesthetic discourse of the film considering socio cultural components (place, social context, visual elements that show it, identity of the characters) (MM – TA)
Develop an awareness of the relationship between paralinguistic elements (gestures, intonation) with the linguistic elements of the interaction between the characters (MM – CB) Develop an awareness of the intertextual dimension of the text of the film with other texts. (TA – MM) Use paralinguistic elements to create effects in communication (TU)
Tasks developed
by the students
Imagine the content of the story by looking at the images.
Listen to a story for pleasure.
Act out the dialogues of the story reproducing the intonation of the characters.
Order the sequence of the story identifying its parts.
Analyze how a story is developed.
Draw the part of the story that you like best.
Turn the dialogue between the characters into a poem to be published in internet.
Read the story to someone in your family.
Compare the country to the city.
Carry out a survey in your class on the preferences of children between country and city.
Listen to a story for pleasure and follow it on the screen.
Carry out a survey on the uses of the internet.
Follow instructions with the mouse and keyboard.
Answer to teacher questions on the colours and icons inferring meanings.
Perform one’s own reading of the site using links according to one’s own individual aims.
Answer questions on the production of milk looking for the information in a web site.
Look up for words in the dictionary.
Compare screens from the same site.
Watch scenes of a film for pleasure.
Play memory games on the images of the film inferring information on the story.
Watch scenes without sound and guess the content of the dialogues through the images.
Perform parts of the scenes using the dialogues and miming the actions.
Acting out parts of the scenes modifying intonation patterns to change the meaning conveyed.
Guess what is going to happen in the next scene.
Imagine new scenes writing down the scripts and acting them out using costumes.
Analyze how characters are built up.
Assessment of the experience
The experience was assessed through semi structured interviews to teachers carried out on a monthly basis and the analysis of students´ portfolios containing written, spoken and multimedia productions.
The analysis of the data gathered reveals that the framework had a positive impact on the development of children's multiple literacies in the following ways:
1. Oral and written productions showed an awareness of the context in which interaction takes place, the interlocutors and communicative purpose and an openness to experimentation of communicative possibilities since:
- Children used language in a “real” way in that they had as an aim a final production with a public repercussion. Tasks went beyond the class into the world of their schools, families and communities.
- Children showed more awareness of the communicative value of language. In the examples of the productions, it is possible to identify the discourse identity of characters as they interact. This is also seen in the drama axis of the work. One of the teachers says: “Children have learned to play with ideas, with pretending to be other people, with a new methodology” while another teacher adds “it's as if we were coming and going, we relate all the topics working with them through different perspectives”. The metalinguistic analysis carried out in the classes seems to enrich children's awareness of the communicative value of language both in reception and production stages.
- Communicative possibilities were broadened to the limit: children manifested highly communicative uses of language. In this respect one of the teachers narrates an anecdote that exemplifies this: “Telling me about their weekend activities, one of the boys asked me: `What's the English for: Hoy se quedan mis primos a dormir?´ I answered: “My cousins are coming to visit me” to what the child said that that did not express what he wanted to say, that it was not the same idea. I had then to provide the closer equivalent “I'm having my cousins over” that I thought was beyond his mastery but I then found out it wasn't. Similarly, when we were talking about deforestation, he went further “people cut down trees” –what I expected- into the statement “people want to create
paper.”
2. Classroom reports revealed high interest on the part of children in the development of the topics covered in class, in particular, through the integration of technology and the media to the tasks: the outside world of the child was present inside the class. Technology and mass media entered the class through a new relationship beyond play, with an educational and communicative potential that children came to understand and enjoy. The use of technology to learn encouraged the child to want to learn and to know more. This is what one of the teachers of the project points out: “You see the kids willing to work and eager to learn. They enjoy when they see in the computers what they have learned elsewhere. What strikes me is the enthusiasm the children show when the content we see in the computers is related to the content they have seen in other subjects.”
3. Children tended to integrate several semiotic systems in a single work, showing an aspect of multiple literacy: the capacity to convey meaning through different semiotic systems. In the poems children wrote, they used image and text in an integrated way. Children's productions show colour variation in interactions and changes of typography, the images added accompany the text and complete its meaning in some cases. The change of colour in the intervention of the characters is meaningful, reflecting an understanding of the interactivity of language.
4. Children reflected an increasing metalinguistic awareness in the variety of resources they used before the tasks given. The explicit metalinguistic work developed in the classes in which the children took on the roles of analysts and code breakers seemed to have an impact on their performances when they did tasks as text users and meaning makers.
“We worked in class on the concepts of characters and setting of a story and the importance of those elements in the narrative structure,” says one of the teachers, “children show an understanding in terms of use and genre types.” This understanding was reflected when they had a production task. They immediately resorted to their analyses to structure new texts and achieve different communicative purposes.
Conclusion
This experience shows that a framework for teaching multiple literacies when teaching a foreign language is possible beyond traditional approaches coming from the field of applied linguistics. CLIL, in the experience described, is used to help students become multiliterate people by means of a framework that combines language, literature, drama, cinema and ICT in the English class. The methodological framework is based on the fact that these content areas can be used to develop analogic, virtual and media literacies in an integrated way to address the development of multiliteracies as required by children today. A single teaching unit, developed around a single theme can be taught through the medium of English using content from these different subjects. In this way, students are exposed to different text types and genres and this exposure helps them develop skills related to intertextuality. Children can also develop analogic, virtual and media literacy in the process as seen in their oral, written and virtual productions and can transfer and integrate what they learn from one content area to the other as they become text users, meaning makers, code breakers and text analysts. We understand that this framework can result of interest as an example of how CLIL principles can be used in a teaching context where English is taught from a wider educational perspective.
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