Marjorie Siegel

1. Marjorie Siegel Claire Johnson Georgia McKown TLED 432 Spring 2014

2. Marjorie Siegel • Professor of Education at Columbia University

3. Multimodality • “the social practice of making meaning by combining multiple semiotic resources” • “central to literate practice everywhere except schools” • “can develop the broad repertoire of literacy knowledge and practices they will need to successfully participate as citizens of local and global communities” (Seigel, 2012)

4. Multimodality Explained • “Students will need to become designers of meaning with facility in the full range of design elements or modes of meaning making—including visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and multimodal meanings—in order to successfully navigate the diversities of texts, practices, and social relations that are part of working lives, public lives, and personal lives in ‘new times” (Seigel, 2012)

5. Things Multimodal Learners Can Do • Play • Perform • Appropriate • Use Collective Intelligence • Transmedia Navigation • Negotiate • Students bring these skills and abilities to school.

6. When to Use Multimodality • Multimodality can be used to cover complex material. • Students can read about Mathematics, Social Studies, or History, and use the Multimodality strategy to make sense of the things they read.

7. “Reading and a variety of related mathematical activities can be orchestrated to help students understand some technical mathematical content (such as distance, the congruence of triangles, or the specific properties of geometric figures) as well as their significance and potential applications ” (Seigel, 1996)

8. Lesson Objectives • Students will: • identify details in wordless books which help them tell a story. • draw a series of pictures which tell a sequential story. • tell a sequential story following their own drawings. • write a story which corresponds to their own sequential drawings. • match their writing to corresponding drawings. • participate in the publishing process.

9. Draw a Story: Stepping from Pictures to Writing • From readwritethink.com • Students “read” pictures from a story without the words, and then continue to draw what happened. They then go on to draw the rest of the story and practice sharing and retelling with classmates.

10. Lesson • SESSION ONE • Gather students together for a story. Show them the cover of Pancakes for Breakfast by TomiedePaola. Tell them that this book has pictures but no words, so they are going to tell the story themselves.  • Have students tell the story page by page, the way the author might have written it if he or she had used words. Point out details in the drawings when necessary to help students add details to the story.  • When the story is finished, ask questions about the story elements, including beginning, what happened next, problem, solution, and ending. Have students talk about their feelings about the story. Have them also talk about how the drawings helped them tell the story.  • Tell students that just like TomiedePaola, they are going to be drawing a story, starting with one picture of a person doing something. Have them think about some things they or other people can do. Call on several students to share their ideas. Make sure you get a variety of responses. If it would be helpful to students, use shared writing to create a word chart of verbs they can use for ideas. 

11. Once students have talked about things people can do, explain to them that you would like them to start out by drawing one picture of a person doing something. Point out that the person is the subject of the drawing and the most important part of the picture. Emphasize to students that you and others will need to be able to look at the picture and tell what the person is doing, so they want to include details in their drawings.  • Show students the paper they will use (half sheets of copier paper). Ask them not to put their names on their papers until after they show you their drawings. Remind them to make their drawings colorful and detailed. As students draw, circulate and ask them to talk about their drawings in process. Ask questions about the drawings to encourage the addition of details, when appropriate. Allow students to start over if they realize the picture is hard to ‘read.'  • As students finish, ask them to tell about the people and actions in their drawings. Have them write their names in pencil on the back, and collect the drawings to use for Session Two.

12. The lesson is to take place for 3 more days or “sessions” with students adding parts of the book to their drawings each day. • At the end of day 4, students should have a book of their drawings telling the story as they interpreted it from the images.

13. Sources Borasi, R., Fonzi, J. M., & Siegel, M. (1996). Using reading to construct mathematics meaning. Yearbook (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). 66-75. Fonzi, Judith., & Siegel, Marjorie. (1995). The practice of reading in an inquiry-oriented mathematics class. Reading Research Quarterly. 632-673. Kontovourki, Stavroula., & Siegel, Marjorie. (2009). Discipline and play with in a mandated literacy curriculum. Language Arts. 30-38. Siegel, Marjorie. 2012. New times for multimodality? Confronting the accountability culture. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 671-681. Siegel, Marjorie. Rereading the signs: multimodal transformations in the field of literacy education. Language Arts. 65-77.