Because of their diverse literacy needs, students need us as teachers to differentiate the product, process and content of learning according to their learning style, interest and readiness. Multiple modalities influence the literacy and learning of our students through the use and creation of multimodal texts, where students have opportunities to use linguistic, visual and audio modes in order to experience, conceptualize, analyze and apply meaning.
When possible and armed with information about the learning style habits of our students, we can use multiple modes of learning in order to engage students in meaningful literacy activities. No lesson requires the use of every mode but instead should be an intentional response to the learning style needs of our students. The more ways we teach, the more likely we reach our students and hone their ability to learn.
Students got to create a short story, by beginning each sentence with a letter from the alphabet. They were only allowed to use each letter once to begin their sentence, so really had to put their creative thinking caps on. The topic was open ended, so students were able to write either fact or fiction. It was so interesting to see how creative they could make their writing and I was very impressed with how well the stories still managed to flow with the letter restriction in place.
