Evaluating Students’ Coding of Animated Narratives as Contemporary Multimodal Authoring in the Middle School English Curriculum

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Coding animated stories in the English classroom has long been advocated as a context for early teaching of computer programming. However, related research has not adequately addressed English curriculum requirements for narrative creation. This article describes the development of a framework for analysing coded animated stories from the perspective of English curriculum expectations. Analysis of 23 stories showed substantial variation in the emphasis given to different multimodal resources among those stories with the most extensive use of such resources. Stories with limited use of these resources excluded those expressing characters’ emotions and positioning the audience to experience the story from a variety of points of view. Stories with extensive multimodal expression were at the upper, but not necessarily highest, coding proficiency levels, while some with high coding proficiency showed limited use of multimodal resources. Implications are drawn for coding as a viable creative tool in English classrooms.