I have a Stage 2 class that have had a lot of exposure to picture books in Stage 1 as modelled and independent reads. However, they do not have a good understanding of the visual images in texts. I will be working with my students on understanding the choices illustrators make, such as where they place certain elements in images and how framing and perspective influence the reader’s view of an image.

I have also noticed that my students have indicated they are having trouble finding information on a website. They click on things in random ways, but they do not have the right metalanguage to talk about what they are doing. They do not seem to use words such as navigate, hyperlink, cursor or menu. Using the right metalanguage means that everyone understands what is being spoken.

I cannot wait to start working with my students and introducing new and exciting digital and multimodal texts.

This year I teach a Stage 1 class. They come from very different backgrounds, some of them have English as an additional language. I need to model using the right language when talking about texts even if they may not be able to use all the words.

I want them to start to understand what new words such as background, foreground, eye line and lighting mean so I will use them when I am talking about images in texts. We will start off with simple images from familiar texts and as they get used to hearing these new words, in a familiar context,

I will move onto unknown texts and continue to use this new metalanguage to talk about features of texts. Not all my students have computers at home, so I must start off simple with our digital language. There will be lots of labelling activities to begin with and lots of modelling.

I am the teacher-librarian, and I am working with a Stage 3 teacher. Next term we will be starting a unit of work looking at the images in a digital text. We will be looking at websites and eBooks.

At the moment, the Stage 3 students have a pretty good understanding of the language such as framing, salience, composition and symbolism. They can accurately answer direct questions using these terms, but unfortunately when they are talking in their small groups, they tend to use more basic conversational language.

For example, instead of describing a child being framed by the branches, as if he is in a jail and cannot escape, they will say he is in a dark forest and there are lots of trees around him.

Using the right language and the right context is a more difficult skill than just understanding it. Having control over their vocabulary will enable students to really work on their self-expression which is an important part of the syllabus

I work in a small primary school. Recently we were discussing how best to support our use of digital and multimodal texts in the classrooms.

Our library, even though it is small has a good range of picture books for our younger students but not many for our Stage 2 and 3 students. We will investigate purchasing texts for our older students. We feel confident that with these resources we will be able to bring rich discussions into our classrooms on the role of images and text in literature.

In the area of digital texts, there is so much available that it takes a lot of time to find the right resources for our students. Before we begin a unit, three of our staff are getting some extra RFF to work together to locate some quality digital online resources in the form of websites, eBook and clips to use with their students.

This type of teacher collaboration will be essential in developing quality units of work.