A Window into Multilingual Students' Worlds: Using Multimodal Writing to Support Writing Growth

Abstract

Writing in school has long been disconnected and inauthentic to multilingual learners due to its monolingual, language‐focused, and standardized features. Although more and more researchers have called for and explored newer asset‐based writing pedagogies, such as digital multimodal writing, to support diverse learners in response to emerging technologies and expanding literacy territories in recent decades. However, there is a need for guidance for teachers to better embrace these digital and multimodal resources into writing classrooms. Therefore, this article highlights a digital multimodal writing cycle for planning, implementing, and evaluating digital multimodal writing activities in diverse classrooms. The author illustrates this cycle with examples from one fourth‐grade Chinese‐English bilingual child in a summer literacy program in the United States. This guide has implications for how digital multimodal writing can be a space to reveal, track, and build upon often unseen resourcefulness and agency of multilingual learners.