Multimodal Literacy Profile

Cassidy Hines

Introduction
For this project, I decided to examine the
literacies of my 14 year old sister, Hannah. She is a
freshman in high school this year, and I am very
interested in the differences between how she
uses literacy and how I use literacy. There are only
6 years in-between us, but there has actually
been a huge change in the development of
social media and how it is used in education
within that time. Computer and internet program
use in and out of the classroom is much more
common now than it was when I was a freshman
in high school, so the differences in how different
literacies take place and how those literacies
interact are extremely interesting to me.

Academic Literacy

English
Language Arts
Worksheets
Vocabulary
Required
Historical Texts

Writing

Mathematics

Science

Open and
Closed Tasks
Required Use of
Academic
English

Mathematical
Vocabulary
Translation of
Mathematical
Language
Measurement

Scientific
Vocabulary
Translation
between
Science and
Mathematics
Use of all other
subjects

English
High School English
Language Arts has
an emphasis on
vocabulary,
worksheets, and
required Young Adult
Literature. This form of
literacy depends on
vocabulary that has
been established
throughout the
school years blended
with knowledge from
everyday life.

Required Historical Texts

Journaling is
another kind
of literacy
that can be
incorporated
into both
school and
personal life.

Required Historical tests in Language Arts requires knowledge from the past
years of schooling combined with a certain historical knowledge and
appreciation to fully engage with and understand the text.

Writing
Writing combines all knowledge that a person
has picked up throughout the years. It
includes the use of Standard English with a
combination of other variables. Writing may
use a formal or informal tone, and it may be
personal, research based, creative, or a
combination of these and many other forms.
It may also be an open or closed task,
meaning that the teacher can decide to
make the prompt more open or closed
ended.

Mathematics

Mathematics,
especially algebra,
requires the
understanding of
letters, numbers,
symbols, and the
combination of all of
these factors. This is an
interesting balance
that is taught in high
school math courses
and can be very
confusing in the
beginning. At some
points, mathematics
also requires the
integration of
standard and
mathematical English
language when story
problems are present
in the curriculum.

Science

Science requires the understanding

and literacy of scientific vocabulary,
chemical structures, and scientific
diagrams. Science is very broad, and
it integrates an innumerable amount
of other literacies into scientific
literacy.

Reading For Fun

Reading for fun creates a more relaxed approach to literacy because

there is not a grade to show for it. However, it requires a greater level of interest
because there is not an outside source pressuring a person to complete a book.

Music
Music, artists, lyrics,
and songs play a
great role in the life of
todays teenagers.
Lyrics are often much
deeper than they
seem at first sight, and
they require a certain
type of literacy and
feeling to transpose
words into meaning.
Artists also play a huge
role in todays society.
They are often seen as
role models and
important in the lives
of todays teens.

Social Media
Twitter
Instagram
Snap Chat

Social Media - Twitter

Twitter promotes the use of
Hashtags in its site. This is a new
type of literacy that is being seen
in todays society.

Twitter is a form of
Social Media
targeted at
communication
between larger
audiences of peers as
opposed to single peers.

Social Media - Instagram

Instagram is a form of social media that

focuses on pictures, quotes, and a
combination of different types of media.
Instagram also uses hashtags and allows
users to create a screen name to
showcase their personal identities. This
application requires a developed
literacy for art, symbolism, and quotes to
derive meaning from multiple types of
media.

Social Media Snap Chat / Selfies

Snap Chat is a form of social media that can
send a selfie, picture, or video to either one
person or a group of people. This feature allows
you to insert text into the picture, but the
recipient can only view the picture for a few
seconds.
This application differs from others in the fact
that it only sends a form of media to indicated
recipients, so only the people that the user
specifically selects can view it. This is interesting
because it shows what Hannah sends to a single
person as opposed to how she conducts herself
when she knows that a multitude of her peers
can view the information that she posts.

Text Messaging
This example of text messaging shows the
differences that the younger population uses
when communicating one on one with others.
Hannah (grey messages) uses many messages
with a lack of punctuation and capital letters to
portray her feelings and ideas. This directly
contrasts the proper grammar and capitalization
techniques that I (yellow message) use in my
replies to her. The message below also shows the
abbreviations for common phrases that have
become integrated into popular culture.

idk = I dont know

Making Food Choices

In everyday life,
Hannah uses literacy
to order from menus at
places such as Taco
Bell (pictured) and to
choose snacks that
she likes. Reading the
ingredients is an
important skill because
she does not like many
foods, so she has to
make sure that these
are not included in the
foods and snacks that
she consumes daily.

Deciding What to Wear

Hannah also uses literacy in everyday life to
pick out what she is going to buy from a
clothing store and what she wants to wear on
a given day.
In a clothing store, she uses literacy to pick
out brand names and teams that she likes so
that she can support these businesses. She
also has to decide what to buy by looking at
the price and seeing if a given item is worth
what a company is charging for it.
When Hannah decides what to wear on a
specific day, she uses her mood to determine
the type and brand of outfit that she wants to
wear that day. Her image to her family,
teachers, and peers is dependent on this
seemingly simple task at the beginning of the
day.

High School Rituals

There are many rituals in
todays high schools that
require literacy and
interpretation. This picture
depicts Hannah being
asked to homecoming with
a sign and flowers.
However, she had to
interpret the meaning of
the sign because they did
not literally waddle to
homecoming together,
and her date did not
actually break any ice. This
is a play on words that is
like many situations that she
must decode daily.

Writing a Card

Card Writing tends to still be a

fairly formal process in American
culture. However, this is a picture
of a card that Hannah sent to
me in mid-September. The
informal messages and picture
that she drew showcases her
informal use of language and
comfortability in how she
communicates with me as her
sister.