Assessment 1: Producing multimodal texts – Examining critical literacies, literacy learning, ICT and in the primary classroom

Assessment type: Presentation and report

Word count/time limit: 2–3 minutes and 800–1,000 words

Assessment description 

You must develop a multimedia presentation (digital learning object) to demonstrate key concepts from a provided quote as it applies to: 

unit materials 

knowledge of text types (and their relevant structural and language features)  

additional research 

knowledge of primary literacy contexts.  

You must then produce an accompanying individually written report demonstrating your knowledge and understanding of multiliteracies. 

Assessment details

This task focuses on pre-service teachers’ ability to apply knowledge of contemporary global literacy practices, linguistic subject knowledge, text types, multimodality, and use of ICT's impact on comprehension and composition to produce a well-designed multimedia presentation to extend practical knowledge of implications for pedagogy and assessment in Years 3–6 English and other curriculum areas. 

Provided quote 

Students encounter visual images accompanied by written language and design elements throughout their daily lives. To be successful, they need to expand their repertoire of strategies for making sense of these complex, multimodal ensembles. (Serafini, 2014, p. 2) 

Multimedia presentation (equivalent to 1,000 words) 

Refer to the key concepts in the Serafini quote and use additional research of multiliteracies and critical literacies as the basis for a multimedia presentation. In the presentation, showcase a classroom teaching and learning activity or strategy that teachers can use to expand their upper primary students’ repertoire of critical visual literacy practices.  

Make sure to: 

Choose and showcase a classroom strategy that is suitable for teaching critical visual literacy in an upper primary classroom. 

Make connections to unit content and research best-practice literacy theories to demonstrate why your showcased strategy is effective for teaching critical visual literacy and understanding and knowledge of multiliteracies.  

Demonstrate your knowledge of text types and how text structures, language features and visual techniques can help meet the purpose of the text through the way the multimedia presentation is composed. 

Your multimedia presentation (or multimodal text) can be a narrated PowerPoint, a video, a podcast, or a simulated interview or conversation between 'experts' that is recorded on Zoom. It needs to show your knowledge of multimodal text construction through the way it is composed. 

Multimedia files can be uploaded directly OR links to multimedia platforms or files can be inserted into a Word document for submission to Turnitin. Please ensure that your Online Facilitator can view or access any files or links that you are submitting prior to the due date. 

Written report (800–1,000 words) 

Write a report that demonstrates your researched understanding and knowledge of multiliteracy theories for teaching literacy as you describe and explain your showcased strategy.

A possible structure follows:

Introduction: Outline and briefly justify your focus strategy and respond to the Serafini (2014) quote. 

Literature review: Provide a brief overview of seminal and current published knowledge on the theories of multiliteracies and critical literacies. Note how Serafini’s work (Serafini, 2014) reflects other key theoretical principles.  

Discussion: Explain how your showcased strategy allows for teachers to enact the theories of multiliteracies and critical literacies in an upper primary classroom. Explain how your strategy allows teachers to build students’ repertoire of strategies. 

Conclusion: Summarise your main conclusions and propose further actions that could be taken.

Supplementaries: Provide supporting materials such as your reference list.

Your report can be uploaded as a Word document or a PDF.

Supporting documents

Chapter 2: Viewing and visual literacy (pp. 5-10) in The potential of the visual: Teaching literacy with multimodal texts (Asha, 2022).

Multimodality, learning and communication: a social semiotic frame (Bezemer & Kress, 2016).

The shape of text to come: How image, text and other modes work (Callow, 2023). Physical copies available in library.

The things you do to know: An introduction to the pedagogy of multiliteracies (pp. 1–36) in A pedagogy of multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015).

Literacies (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012). 

Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication (Kress, 2010).  

Reading the visual: An introduction to teaching multimodal literacy (Serafini, 2014).

Critical literacy as a way of being and doing (Vasquez et al., 2019).