Creative Videomaking in Diverse Primary Classrooms: Using Drama and Technology to Enhance Oral and Digital Literacy

Digital pedagogies have significant potential to enhance classroom learning, and teachers are increasingly seeking ways to integrate these approaches. Combining video with drama provides students with opportunities to explore technology while expressing themselves through dramatic performance. This article presents a qualitative case study exploring the use of creative videomaking as a literacy strategy in an upper primary class at a high-diversity Australian school. The research explored different forms of literacy involved in collaborative videomaking, as well as benefits and challenges associated with this approach. Thematic analysis of observations, interviews, and student videos identified collaborative drama and videomaking as an engaging and inclusive pedagogy for diverse learners. Benefits included a strong focus on oral and visual communication and an authentic use of digital technologies. Written literacy would have benefitted from separate sessions targeting scriptwriting, however, and although critical digital topics captured students’ interest, these also needed more time than was allocated. Other challenges included increased self-consciousness for some students when recording their voices, limitations of filming in a classroom, and additional time needed for lesson preparation. Further findings showed drama strategies were particularly useful for improving at-risk students’ confidence and sense of identity as learners and speakers of English. Overall, integrating videomaking into literacy instruction effectively fostered multimodal and technological literacy, creativity, and identity for diverse students.