Ten lessons — from reading a medium’s language to producing a multimodal text — each with teaching content, an exam‑style question, a Band 6 model, analysis and self‑check criteria.
Intended learning: understand that the same message changes with its medium, and name the six mediums.
Open with a single idea: translate one simple message — “School finishes early Friday” — across several mediums (a spoken announcement, a printed note, a poster, a news ticker, an email) and watch the meaning shift. Introduce the six mediums spoken, print, visual, media, multimedia and digital and the words affordance and constraint so students can talk precisely about what each can and cannot do.
A glowing visual sign best suits a rule about the oval after dark, because its affordances — visibility at night and instant, wordless impact — match the moment of use. Speech would be forgotten by morning and print is unreadable in the dark; the sign uses light itself to relate a rule about the dark, making medium and message one.
List the six mediums and add one real example of each from your week.
Intended learning: read voice, pace and pause — and deliver a short spoken text with effect.
Spoken language means with the voice and body, not just words. Teach the spoken grammar: volume, pace, pause, pitch, emphasis, silence, and kinesics (eye contact, gesture, posture). Model how a single line changes meaning — “I didn’t say you lied” means six different things depending on which word is stressed.
I placed a two-second pause before the key fact so the quiet would give the news weight, slowed my pace across the warning so it could not be missed, and ended on a falling pitch for certainty. In speech the silence is not an absence — it is the sentence the listener remembers.
Write and rehearse a 30-second announcement; notate where you will pause and stress.
Intended learning: read print texts’ typography, layout and structure as meaning.
Print means through words and their arrangement on the page. Teach the print grammar: typography (font, size, weight, case), headings, paragraphs, white space, bullet lists, layout and sequence. A 72-point headline is a shout; a haiku’s broken line is a breath. Show pairs — the same sentence in different typefaces and layouts — and ask what each implies.
The poster builds the notice’s impact with a large black heading that is the eye’s first stop, generous white space that suggests urgency rather than clutter, and a big photograph that works faster than any sentence. Print grammar shapes attention: the poster tells the reader what matters before a single word is read, while the tiny-text version hides its plea in the very sizing designed to be glanced past.
Redesign the tiny-text notice as an effective poster; annotate three choices.
Intended learning: name colour, composition and symbol, and explain what visual choices do.
Visual texts mean through colour, line, shape, framing, focal point, perspective and symbol. Model reading an infographic and a photograph: warm versus cool colour, high versus low angle, what is centred and what is cut out. Teach that composition is the argument — where the eye lands is where the meaning is made.
The infographic makes its argument entirely in visual grammar. Blue — the colour of water itself — saturates the frame, and the single enormous droplet is both focal point and symbol, magnified to say the resource is precious and everywhere relevant. The centred, tiny text “every drop” forces the eye back to the drop’s heart and turns an image into a promise: for saving water, the size of each drop is the size of the whole cause.
Design a one-symbol poster for a school value and annotate your visual choices.
Intended learning: read the grammar of film and news — shot, editing, sound and selection.
Media texts combine sound and image to feel real and immediate. Teach the key film grammar: shot type (close–up, wide, medium), camera angle (high, low, eye–level), lighting, editing and music. For news, teach selection and gatekeeping: what is shown, what is left out, the order of stories and the impact of a single word in a headline marks a position.
The edit builds drama and comfort in one arc. The wide shot of the sea magnifies nature into spectacle, the close–up of the wet worker turns the storm into a human face, and the urgent score inflates tension — until the calm voiceover arrives as the crescendo of relief that sells safety. Selecting these three shots and not panning to damage makes the news a reassurance, not just a report.
Storyboard a 30-second news clip about your school for two different tones.
Intended learning: explain how several modes cooperate, rather than merely list them.
Multimedia texts stack sign systems — print, image, sound, moving image, interactivity. The highest skill is explaining cooperation: not “it has a photo and words” but “the photo shows the cost and the words put a name to it, so together they make a plea neither could make alone.” Introduce a simple claim: in multimedia, one plus one can equal three.
Each element on the page does a separate job that the others then complete. The photo gives the cause a face and moves the heart; the headline says in four words what the photo only implies; the budget table adds the numbers that make the ask feel honest and reachable; and the donate button converts feeling and reason into action. No element works alone — the page is persuasive because every mode leans on the next.
Map the four elements of the fundraiser page and write one sentence of cooperation each.
Intended learning: read digital structure and interactivity, and evaluate reliability critically.
Digital texts are interactive, networked and impermanent. Teach students to read the interface (navigation, links, buttons, scroll) as meaning, and to evaluate reliability with the “who, why, when” check: who made it, why, and how recently. Discuss algorithms, echo chambers and how a search result is not the same as a fact.
The feed feels true because repetition in the medium mimics consensus — three voices that sound like agreement can be one source shared three times. A critical reader tests it with the source’s who, why and when an original document or a second, independent outlet, and notes the feed is built to keep me comfortable, not to correct me. The medium of the feed is engineered for agreement, so agreement is not evidence.
Test one claim you saw online this week with the who–why–when method.
Intended learning: apply the M–M–A routine — medium, meaning makers, analysis — to one real text.
Consolidate the whole program by analysing one real multimodal text with the M–M–A routine: name the mediums first; identify the sign systems and grammar features (meaning makers); then analyse effect for a stated audience. Model the difference between describing (“there is a photo”) and analysing (“the photo’s low angle makes the child appear grand and capable, selling dignity not pity”).
Medium. This is a print poster that gestures at the digital, pairing the affordance of permanence with an address meant to continue online. Meaning makers. The photo’s warm, eye-level framing dignifies the child; the statistic “1 in 4” lends logos; the bold headline “You can change this” uses second person to make the reader the subject; the web link turns the poster into a doorway. Analysis. Each mode targets a different appeal and hands the reader to the next — the photo moves, the number rationalises, the line empowers, and the address converts feeling into a click. It is a map of its own persuasion, and that is exactly the Band 6 reading.
Struct your own M–M–A analysis of a text you choose.
Intended learning: plan and compose a short multimodal text where each mode is a deliberate choice.
Model composing as a design task. Match medium to message first (audience and goal), choose the modes and explain why, then draft each element and reflect on what each mode adds. Stress that a strong composer can justify every choice — “I used a close-up because…” — with the grammar of the medium.
My poster leads with a bold, joyful photo of members mid–activity because the emotion of belonging is the strongest reason to join; a headline of three words keeps the print to a thumb’s read; a QR code answers the digital need to act instantly. I chose a photo over drawn art because real faces build the trust a club needs, and I put the QR at the bottom because the eye travels there last, turning feeling into joined motion.
Complete your statement of intention, naming two mode choices and their effect.
Intended learning: evaluate a composition against criteria and reflect on medium choices.
Bring the program to a close with a structured gallery walk and reflection. Use the marking criteria table from the guide to peer-assess, and end with a reflective piece answering: which medium suits your voice best, what does it let you do, and what does it hide? Editing across mediums means checking every mode for effect, not just the words.
My strongest choice was trusting an image where earlier I would have added words: the photograph’s warmth does the persuading, and my headline only names the feeling it already creates. If I revised, I would slow the layout — now that I read white space as meaning, I can see my page shouted when it meant to whisper. Reflection, in this program, has taught me that editing a medium is editing a story.
Complete the reflection and set one goal for composing across mediums next term.
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