Integrating new literacies, namely visuals and video, into a traditional, basal-text driven curriculum in a secondary classroom

The purpose of this thesis was to create a curriculum for a secondary language arts classroom that took traditional lesson plans from an anthology and integrated visuals/videos into the lesson plans to increase rigor, relevance, and engagement in the classroom.;Each unit starts with visuals/video then moves to texts and the anthology. This progression is designed to allow the students to move from a familiar place where they feel comfortable and confident, the visual/video, to a medium they are less comfortable and confident with, the text. Another goal of this curriculum is overwhelming engagement throughout each unit. Also, by building upon a foundation of confidence, students will ultimately analyze deeper and achieve a higher level of success with analysis, even when they encounter the textual materials which will increase rigor.