Tween here and there, transitioning from the early years to the middle years: exploring continuities and discontinuities in a multiliterate environment

Abstract

This article considers the continuities and/or discontinuities for literacy development experienced by students as they make their transition from the early foundational years of primary school into the "first" stage of the middle phase of learning within a multiliterate environment. Year 4 can be a critical period in reading development with the surfacing of some difficulties in reading comprehension for some students. This phenomenon has been termed the "fourth grade slump". New digital technologies and multimodal texts are viewed as panacea for improving literacy instruction and ameliorating the fourth-grade slump. Data from the case study of one year four teacher, Janelle (psuedonymn) is reported. It explores how she grappled with the implementation of an Interactive Whiteboard and a variety of multimodal resources. Findings suggest that the affordances and constraints of multimodal texts and how teachers use them can offer both continuities and discontinuities for literacy development.