Show, Don't Tell: Multimodal Story Feedback in a K–1 Play-Based Writing Unit

Abstract

Background With standardization ever squeezing creative curricula in K–1 classrooms, creating time for a play-based multimodal writing curriculum that leverages children's strengths as storytellers is revolutionary. Due in part to accountability policy pressures, print-based writing and verbocentric writing feedback are still often privileged in school curricula. And yet, children are natural whole-body storytellers who will be asked to write and present ideas in all sorts of forms. In order to leverage children's storytelling strengths, we need to teach writing through multiple modes: This means expanding both writing instruction and the types of feedback offered to writers in primary classrooms. Research Questions This study examines two questions: How is feedback being given, and what impact does it have on children's storytelling? How is play/storying being sanctioned? Setting & Participants The study took place in a K–1 classroom in an inquiry-based, project-based school in the U.S. Midwest during a month-long storytelling workshop unit. Participants included two co-teachers and 46 children aged 5 to 7. Research Design This qualitative study used ethnographic methods and participant observation. Data Collection & Analysis Video data were collected during workshop each day for one month, including minilessons, writing time, and share time, which is the focus of this article. Discourse analysis and a multimodality theoretical lens were used to analyze how children gave one another feedback on their stories through embodied demonstration, gesture, acting, out, or copying one another's storytelling devices. Findings Findings indicate that children's acting/embodiment, humor/parody, and copying all worked as effective forms of multimodal feedback, which ultimately functioned as teaching for developing peers’ storytelling strategies and skills. However, teachers inadvertently privileged language alone via narration, or language with demonstration in feedback sessions. Conclusions Teacher/researcher collaborations should explore ways to reimagine forms of writer's feedback that include and account for demonstration, copying, and impromptu performance and that, ultimately, open up the definition of what counts as writing at school. Um, you should work on making your story, like, real. Because, um, you're going all over the place [wiggles entire body to illustrate]—Allen, age 6