Composing Informative Multimodal Texts

Informative texts are the kinds of texts we generally consider to be factual or non-fiction texts. They provide information which is valued as part of the collective knowledge of a culture in ways that are distinct from imaginative, literary texts or fiction (see Chapter 4). They are the texts that are important for exploring and documenting the disciplinary knowledge base in our information-rich societies, such as scientific reports and historical accounts, as well as the everyday social and transactional texts for getting things done, like instructions for setting up a mobile phone, protocols for safe food handling and classroom rules. As contemporary literacy practices rely more on digital tools for text production, informative texts for school learning are becoming predominantly multimodal in both print and electronic formats. Teaching students to compose such texts is essentially about providing explicit instruction in the multimodal design of information. This chapter explores the structures and features of multimodal informative texts types relevant to curriculum learning areas, outlines some strategies for explicitly teaching students to compose multimodal informative texts in integrated curriculum units and provides some ideas for formative assessment in relation to composing multimodal information texts.