New Literacies in the Material World

This article reports on a design experiment in which 4th grade bilingual students were invited to engage in new literacy practices of linking, multimodality, and design using only ordinary, concrete materials like ink, paper, tape, and boxes.  The inquiry was undertaken in the midst of a unit of study on memoir in a writing workshop, under conditions of a high-stakes writing test, in a low-income school, in a classroom of Latino students who spoke Spanish as their first language.  The students engaged with these literacy practices common in digital environments, without digital devices, in varied ways, including: the use of objects, words, and partial texts as links capable of changing one’s mind; the use of images as tools for thinking and for revising toward readers; and design as a means of focusing thinking and also making unconventional textual objects.