Reading Review Blog Post – Part A

Since I was introduced to the term “multiliteracies”, I have been constantly looking out for opportunities to incorporate it in my music program. According to the website “New Learning: Transformational Designs for Pedagogy and Assessment” (www.newlearningonline.com), multiliteracies refers to two major aspect in nowadays literacy:

1. The variability of meaning making in different cultural, social contexts.
2. Multimodal communication using a variety of media such as audio, video, visual, gestural, spatial, etc.

In this 21st century, electronic devices are abundantly used. People communicate through emails, text messaging, audio messaging, and/or sending photographs or videos to each others. At school, we make sure that our students learn how to read and write. However, is that adequate for our students to communicate in this technological century? Please do not get me wrong, I am not saying that the ability to read and write is not important. In fact, it is the most important fundamental ability one needs to communicate with others. A person could not write or read text message or email if he or she does not know how to read and write. However, I think one would also need to have the ability to make meaning in multimodal communication. For example, understanding a person’s body gesture, or make meaning out of a person’s drawing. I have two children at home, they are very different in ways of communication. My 9 years old son likes drawing comics strips, therefore, you could find text as well as comic strips with conversation bubbles in his diary. My 6 years old daughter, on the other hand, likes taking photos and drawing picture. She asked for her own camera when she was 4, since then, she takes pictures of things that she treasures and places that she loves to go. As a parent (an adult), I do understand my children’s way of communication and would be able to make meaning of their contexts. However, I would question, how about their peers? Will they be able to understand by reading my son’s comic strips or looking at the photographs my daughter took?

Every year, teachers (including myself as an elementary core music teacher) have to write an overview at the beginning of the school year and submit to the administrator. Every year, I would slightly modify my overview so that students would learn the elements (beat, melody, rhythm, theory) through different repertoires and different ways. This year, as I was working on my overview, I tried to incorporate the new B.C. curriculum’s “Big Ideas” in my music program. Out of the blues, I had this crazy idea of throwing my “routine and regular” overview out the window, and commit myself in creating a brand new, unique music program that its goals are to teach the elements of music and to foster students’ multiliteracies through the study of composers’ masterpieces, dance or visual arts being inspired by music. I have presented the idea to my administrator and have her full support on it. I am given a projector along with an iPad and document camera to use in class, which allows me to use multimodal resources in my teaching. Now, I would inquire on HOW to teach multiliteracies in a music classroom.