UKLA believes that reading/viewing and writing/designing often work across modes, media, and genres for contemporary learners.

UKLA believes that enjoying reading is the right of all children.

Rapid technological change has meant that everyday practices surrounding reading and writing have shifted significantly over the last 20 years.

This article is an updated version of a chapter from the UKLA publication Beyond Words: Developing children’s response to multimodal texts where teachers in a multilingual school in Birmingham introduced children to multimodal texts through reading and making comic strip stories. Since this chapter was first written, the school has grown so that there are now 938 children on roll including the Nursery, and the Assistant Head Sarah Abraham is now Deputy Head Dr Sarah Allen.

With lots of practical examples, this article describes how children in nursery settings, many from Minority Ethnic Groups, some who experienced difficulties with learning, worked alongside their parents and other family members to create their own multimodal storybooks. The stories were translated into twelve different languages for sharing at home. Thanks to the English Association for allowing UKLA to reproduce the article.

In July 2016 the CPRT published their 7th Research Briefing and Report papers entitled: The Digital Age and its Implications for Learning and Teaching in the Primary School. The report and the summary found within the research briefing, written by Professor Cathy Burnett provide a substantial but necessarily selective survey of research related to children’s lives in the digital age within and beyond school. Please access the resources here and here or download the pdfs on the right.Thanks to the CPRT for giving UKLA permission to share these resources.