Critical Lessons and Playful Literacies: Digital Media in PK—2 Classrooms

Utilizing a New Literacies Studies framework, this article presents critical lessons in film production from a multiple site case study. Examples of children’s classroom experiences demonstrate how filmmaking and play come together in a process of storying’a collaborative and multimodal approach to text composition. Students in both preschool and early elementary contexts expressed an expanded understanding of composing collaboratively through digital means. Students also utilized technology in sophisticated ways and accessed their knowledge of popular culture and film conventions through the process of storying. Storying allowed diverse learners to cultivate their literate identities along a variety of possible developmental avenues. These multiple pathways to literate identity development invite teachers to examine what counts as literacy within the classroom and imagine possibilities for students when oral language and written text are no longer privileged.