Concerning pedagogical practices that convert oral meanings to writing meanings I will analyze an activity I developed with my 9thform students. I wanted them to infer that given two solids with the same height and basis, if the solid A has one base and solid B has two basis, then the volume of solid A is one third of the volume of solid B.

V(solid A)=1/3xV(solid B)

(see animation here)

First, I divided the students in two groups. I used acrylic solids like the ones of the picture below.

Set of solids

(source)

I gave one of the groups the cone and the cylinder and the other group used the triangular pyramid and the triangular prism.

They had to fill, with water, the triangular pyramid and then measured the quantity of liquid using a measuring cup (the same for the other group, but with the cone). After this, they filled the triangular prism (that has the same height and base as the pyramid) with water (respectively, the cylinder). They also measured the liquid used to fill the prism.

Then, an oral discussion was promoted to debate the results of the experiment. They concluded that the pyramid and the cone required 1/3 of the water that was needed to fill the triangular prism and the cylinder, respectively. From this, they inferred the general result. The ideas that were orally discussed were also written on the board and then written in formal way in the notebooks.

Using this experience students used the tactile and visual modes to manipulate the geometric solids, conduct the experiment and interpret what they saw (the quantity of water needed to fill the solids). They then shifted to oral mode when we debated the results and drawn the conclusion from them. Finally we used written mode to write down the conclusions, both on the board and in the notebook. But in the board, the language we used was informal, close to oral language, while in the notebook we wrote a formal, objective, revised text.

Definitely this was a multimodal intervention. Students worked under a synaesthetic environment to learn a new curricular content in a meaningful way. They worked a mathematical abstract result in a tangible way, allowing a deeper understanding of it.

References:

Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2012). Literacies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139196581