Portfolio Overview

Multimodality in a Co-teach Classroom:

Strengthening Students' Perceptions of Education and of Self

The main purpose for this portfolio is as a culminating project for the University of Akron’s course, New Directions in the Teaching of Writing.  Throughout the summer semester, we explored the need for multimodalities in the composition classroom, which will hopefully allow us to reach more students in a meaningful way.  

Since we were encouraged to take any approach we wanted as Dr. Amanda Booher led us through visual, aural, and digital projects, I chose to create a series of assignments that would help scaffold a new teaching venture for my upcoming school year.  After 21 years in the classroom, mostly at the AP and Honors levels, I will partner in Co-teach courses for the very first time.  While I have instructed an intervention Reading Lab course twice, this will be my first time with an Intervention Specialist and with a large number of Special Education students.  To be successful with these struggling students, it is imperative to create accessible lessons, lessons they are able to follow without becoming buried under the weight of assignments that ignore the differentiation needed to meet learning goals.

To that end, I created: a visual Piktochart to trace characterization in The Crucible; an aural slide presentation of excerpts from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God; and a digital presentation of three versions of “Coming Home,” two music videos and Lebron James’ letter to his Cleveland fans.  Each project offers students the multimodality option so that they can pick and choose, finding their own paths to success.  There are multiple videos, transcripts of readings and lyrics, as well as auditory versions of text.

With this start, I will continue to create multimodal lessons for this particular Co-Teach course. Starting a new Blog specifically for these students,  they will be able to  access all classroom materials in the format utilized for this project. Hopefully, by exploring multimodality and its possibilities, I will help strengthen students’ perception of education and their perception of self.