In this article, we revisit the co-creation of a 45-min film, "Gender is Like an Ocean," produced with middle school students in response to Kirstin Cronn-Mills's young adult novel "Beautiful Music for Ugly Children." The making of this film brought together collaborative inquiry and arts creation. Drawing on the work of…

Textual consumption in digital spaces has come under scrutiny by educators who worry about youth's surface-level comprehension of such texts as well as the polarizing nature of online discourse. This paper synthesizes affective concepts of critical witness and glimmers of care to explore two cases in which adolescent writers in digital OST…

We present an audience reception study of participant reactions to gender-based violence in Issa López' 2008 film, "Casi Divas," chosen for its nuanced depiction of women grappling with several violences. Over three focus groups with 15 adult participants, we used Galtung's conflict theory to explore what participants identified as…

Being literate in today's world involves more than reading and writing traditional works in print. Students need experiences with a range of multimodal narratives, including animation. Multimodal narratives offer many entry points for engagement, and design plays an important role as readers/viewers navigate their way through these works and make…

Implementation of digital literacies in secondary literature study can result in increased textual engagement and explorations of identity. The author describes the results of practitioner research at a Midwestern U.S. high school in which senior AP students created short films as a way to analyze literature circle texts. The purpose of the study…

The article describes the results of teachers using a critical language lens to analyze linguistic stereotypes in TV series, movies, cartoons, and social media posts. I share the key questions teachers asked about language use in texts as well as the results of their analysis. Based in a cultural modeling pedagogy (Lee, 2007), teachers examined…

The changing nature of communication has accentuated the need to develop multimodal literacy in students. Although the conventional way of asking a series of questions to elicit students' comprehension has helped build reading and comprehension skills, teachers could provide more support in the form of the language, pedagogical scaffolds, and…

Young children who are learning to negotiate print experience emerging literacy. For adults who are beginning entrance into the navigation and negotiation of print literacy, the term "burgeoning" is selected as a more accurate portrayal of the nature of literacy extension into adulthood. This phenomenological case study investigates the…

The purpose of this study was to explore middle school (grade 6-8) students' understanding and interpretation of human rights issues with local and global implications as they engaged in the process of creating a film after reading print and multimedia texts and participating in human rights education activities. As the students explored…

Pre-service teachers collaborated with 6th grade students to audit a College of Education building looking for possibilities to "go green." The student/teacher teams developed an e-book collection of project descriptions, completed budgets, estimated timelines, and sustainability requirements for the university to consider. The e-books…

In addressing literacy in high school education, it is important to foreground the particular issues faced by growing numbers of English Language Learners (ELLs). In our increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, this is a matter for all literacy teachers, as well as ELL specialists. In Australia, teachers of ELLs are…

The authors provide a rationale for the critical study of film texts in the English language arts. For struggling or reluctant students, film offers an accessibility that the printed text may not. Students who are intimidated by, or impeded from, accessing print text are able to discuss film with acuity and insight. The study of visual texts can…

The question is not whether literacy practices are present in contemporary popular culture--it is hard not to find a movie or program without some representation of literacy in it. The more important and useful question is, How do we in the audience interpret the literacy practices we find in popular culture? What do such representations tell us…

This column discusses the 40th anniversary of Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" and the Situationist International group. The author juxtaposes a few brief historical snapshots with definitions of key terms and paraphrases some important ideas and events. The author also refers to selected texts and Internet sources by and about Debord…

Explores the Harry Potter phenomenon with college students in a university course. Compares the first book with the first movie. Presents an in-depth discussion of the movie and how it relates to the book. (SG)