"Low-Performing" Students as Digital Curators and Text Designers in a Second-Grade Classroom

• In Event: Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Children as Active Agents: Game Players, Curriculum Designers, Actors of Violence, and Digital Curators

Abstract

This ethnographic study focuses on the digital text creations of three second graders, as they participated in a classroom literacy curriculum that was integrated with digital literacies. From sociocultural and multimodal literacy perspectives, I examined the focal students’ meaning-making processes with/within two digital literacy tools, Storybird and iMovie. Data analysis revealed that although labeled as a “low-performing” by school assessment, the focal students presented themselves as capable text composers, curators, and/or designers, by mindfully curating cartoon artworks as well as (re)appropriating a number of audio-visual signs to make meaning of their digital stories. The study contributes to the understanding of children as multimodal learners and critiques the decontextualized school assessment that ignores children’s new literacy practices beyond conventional school walls.

Author

• Ting Yuan, College of Staten Island, City University of New York