Digital technology and ICT texts will not replace traditional literacy. Since they are increasingly part of children’s everyday experience, however, they need to be integrated into the framework in order to maximise children’s potential for literacy and learning.
From their earliest years children are surrounded by texts which combine images, words and sound, on screen and on paper, in the home, in the street and in school. This means that they bring a wide experience of texts to their school work, expecting to read images as well as print and, increasingly, expecting to use computers in seeking information and composing their own texts. Many of these texts combine words with moving images, sound, colour, a range of photographic, drawn or digitally created visuals; some are interactive, encouraging the reader to compose, represent and communicate through the several dimensions offered by the technology. Not only are there new types of digital texts, however, but a massive proliferation of book and magazine texts which use image, word, layout and typography, often echoing the dimensions of screen-based technology.
The increasing number of texts which include words, images and sound are often categorised according to the medium of communication, for example:
- the computer – internet information and PowerPoint™ presentations
- on paper – picture books, magazines, novels, information books
- sound and visual media – radio, television, videos and DVDs
- gesture and/or movement
- images: moving and still
- sound: spoken words, sound effects and music
- writing
Presentational software and databases extend possibilities for composition. Mixed mode texts can be constructed on paper, but digital technology, with its facility for importing pictures and manipulating text, means that presentation of writing can be more varied, involving design features which paper-based writing does not allow. In addition, they often accompany those texts with spoken explanations.
Speak and Listen for a wide range of purposes in different contexts
1. Speaking
- Speak competently and creatively for different purposes and audiences, reflecting on impact and response
- Explore, develop and sustain ideas through talk
2. Listening and responding
- Understand, recall and respond to speakers’ implicit and explicit meanings
- Explain and comment on speakers’ use of language, including vocabulary , grammar and non verbal features
3. Group discussion and interaction
- Take different roles in groups to develop thinking and complete tasks
- Participate in conversations, making appropriate contributions building on others’ suggestions and responses
4. Drama
- Use dramatic techniques including work in role to explore ideas and texts
- Create, share and evaluate ideas and understanding through drama
Read a wide range of texts on paper and on screen
5. Word reading skills and strategies
- Use phonics as first strategy for reading unknown words
- Use knowledge of syntax, context, word origin and structure to establish meaning
6. Understand and interpret texts
- Retrieve, select and describe information, events or ideas
- Deduce, infer and interpret information, events or ideas
- Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including non-linearity and multimodality in on-screen texts
- Explain and comment on writers’ use of language, including vocabulary, grammatical and literary features
At the same time, many books available in schools now cannot be read by attention to writing alone. Picture books have for some time provided pleasurable narrative reading experiences but also much learning in the curriculum is carried by images, often presented in double page spreads which are designed to use layout, font size and shape and colour to complement the information carried by the words. The routes or pathways taken through those texts vary, often involving reading radially rather than in the traditional direction required of a printed page of continuous text. The skills and expertise of teachers and pupils in reading books like these can be readily used to help pupils become discriminating navigators and readers of on-screen texts.
Using digital photographs of drama presentations of episodes of a story can help children understand sequencing and paragraphing. Similarly, discussing changes of scene in video narratives supports the use of connectives to indicate shifts of time and place.
Once again the IWB can greatly aid the process of identifying and commenting on text features, whether on paper or on screen. Using the IWB means that shared and guided reading can be more easily managed, allowing the teacher to expose processes in reading and to model text marking and highlighting to comment on the writer’s use of vocabulary, grammatical and literary features. In individual work, pupils can similarly use the mouse to identify literary features. A key aspect of such teaching and modelling is explicit discussion about how the different elements of multimodal texts work together to make meaning.
7. Engage with and respond to texts
- Read independently for purpose, pleasure and learning
- Respond imaginatively, relating what is read to experience and context
- Evaluate writers’ purposes and viewpoints, and the overall effect of the text on the reader
DVD and video texts are increasingly being seen as part of the reading repertoire and offer good opportunities for evaluating purposes and viewpoints. Discussion of the ways that film texts are put together, for example decisions made by the director about camera angles, where to use a close-up, middle- or long-distance shot can greatly aid the process of evaluating the effect of a text on the reader or viewer and offer a focus for sharing impressions of the overall effects on a text on the reader. DVDs can be easily paused and re-viewed to analyse how directors (and so writers) construct narratives. Discussions like these, based on film, transfer very readily to discussions about authors’ intentions and points of view and give pupils a frame for discussing response to books.