Ways of Taking from Books in ASL Book Sharing

Using a multimodal literacies framework, this article describes the teaching goals and strategies of three instructor participants in an ASL book-sharing program. The concept of multimodal literacies views literacy as a social practice where the written mode is embedded in other modes of representation. An ethnographic approach that included participant observation and interviews was taken in a ten-month study of parents, children, and instructors participating in the program. In the study, the written mode was embedded in ASL storytelling and children’s books were themselves multimodal resources that were utilized in distinct ways by the instructor participants.