Results are in...

So what effect did teaching reading through multimodal texts have? Check it out:

My biggest wondering is: how much did using multimodal texts actually influence the data? 

I used a multi-pronged strategy which included building relationships at home, increasing 1:1 reading time through TA and parent help, using our school librarian to 'advertise' books to the learners, regularly visiting the school library, using the pizza challenge competition to increase home reading, having the children create multimodal responses to texts in meaningful ways, as well as crafting specific lessons using multimodal texts aimed to maximise engagement and extended discussion.

I am left wondering how much of an influence multimodal texts had, amongst all this! I suspect it had a big influence in engaging the learners and helping them make connections and use specific strategies for inferencing and supporting their ideas.

Another wondering I have is how could I have pushed those learners who were below standard to achieve at standard? Despite all the methods used above, 2 learners stayed below standard (although they did make 12 months progress) and one learner is still well below standard. These children all have processing difficulties. How might I have tailored the learning to get greater shift here?

Overall, I am pleased with the journey the learners and I have taken. It is gratifying to see reading progress being made, and even more so to see these learners now wanting to read for pleasure,  knowing what books spin their wheels and being intrinsically motivated to read more. Ka mau te wehi!

Next Steps: Inspiration from the Manaiakalani CoL

One of my colleagues in Manaiakalani is Angela Moala, a Year 4 teacher at Point England School. She is putting together a multimodal text database as part of her MIT-Spark Innovation, and this is a tremendously valuable resource for multimodal texts. The link to the doc is accessible to Manaiakalani CoL and outreach schools.

As we are doing similar inquiries, it has been great to compare Angela's journey with mine. Reflecting on this, a next step for me is to make sure I systematically include tension/challenge texts and student selected texts as part of the children's reading journey in the lesson progression.

Graphic courtesy of Dr. Rebecca Jesson, Auckland University.

Responding in Multimodal ways

Thinking about increasing engagement and how powerful student voice is.... 
being inspired by old podcasts from Korero Point England...
experimenting with digital tools...

Or Chatterpix and link to Aurasma

Our next step in learning through multimodal means... creating multimodal response... sharing to an audience!

Reflect, Review... Try!

Thinking about maximum engagement in order to spark momentum with this group of readers... They seemed to struggle with a chapter book (10 chapters!) Even though we bolstered the learning with multi-modal experiences at certain points. Perhaps we scale back to really short chapter books for a time? For example, this type of text by Joy Cowley.

We are starting the hell pizza reading challenge this week as well - with a twist. The children will have to read at least 4 different genres of books, and create 5 book reviews. At least 3 of these book reviews will be digital. Let's link to Aurasma and the children can make our classroom walls come to life with their voice and opinions. 

Tapping into Get Epic is another resource I am trialling. At the moment the learners are reading texts on here purely for fun but I have not yet chosen a text from here to delve deeper in reading lessons. The advantage here is that the books can be 'read to me' and contain quizzes and videos, which add to the multi-modal experience and increase engagement.

Maniakalani Learn, Create, Share

My initial hunches were:

I gathered student voice about reading based on my hunches. Here is what the data looked like: