Multimodal assessments: affording children labeled 'at-risk' expressive and receptive opportunities in the area of literacy

摘要

Current literacy assessments are focused on a single mode of meaning-making (reading and writing, whether oral or written) and assume that literacy and language are 'fixed systems'- comprised of discrete skills that can be taught and measured in isolation. This validation and privileging of a single mode of assessment are most culpable in children labeled 'At-risk', falling significantly behind those without this label. Many informal, multimodal assessments endeavor to give a more complete picture of children as literate beings. This study investigates what a teacher can learn from a diverse range of assessment forms and modes. In a fourth-grade self-contained classroom, students engaged in multimodal assessments and created multimodal portfolios. Four students labeled 'At-risk' were chosen for a deeper analysis. Students' artifacts, interviews, and observations served as the main data sources. Both narrative analysis and analysis of narrative were utilized to generate a more complete narrative of the four students as meaning makers and communicators. The general findings suggest that these children labeled 'At-risk' were, in fact, able to engage in multimodal thinking and communication from a critical stance.