Enriching and Assessing Young Children's Multimodal Storytelling

Abstract

This article provides primary teachers with assessment tools and curricular examples to expand writers’ workshop by adding a multimodal storytelling unit on drama and filmmaking, allowing students to create engaging off‐the‐page stories through films and play performances that enrich writing. Too often, children's literacy abilities are assessed solely based on what they can write on paper, overlooking the rich ways children convey meaning through multiple communication modes like sound effects, gesture, movement, images, and language in their storytelling. This research recognizes play as an important literacy and argues that a multimodal emphasis in teaching and assessment more closely matches the ways children learn and make meaning in their everyday lives. This study is a part of a larger, ongoing multiyear, multisite study of literacy playshops in early childhood classrooms and teacher education.