Evaluating students’ Coded animated stories as multimodal narrative composition in the middle school English curriculum

• Year 7 students can learn to code engaging animated narratives with basic Scratch. • English teachers can learn to sufficient coding to support students coding stories. • Student animated narratives of 2 – 3 min can meet English curricula requirements. • Student multimodality use can be evaluated using a criterion-based framework. • Student coding proficiency can be extended through coding animated narratives. Coding animated stories in the English classroom has been advocated from over a decade ago as an integrated curriculum context for early teaching of computer programming while simultaneously developing students’ multimodal narrative authoring. 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 an engaging creative tool in English classrooms.