Using Interdisciplinary, Project‐Based, Multimodal Activities to Facilitate Literacy Across the Content Areas

Tour Across America is an interdisciplinary, project‐based, multimodal ( IPM ) activity where students get the opportunity to apply what they learn to a real‐life situation while illustrating the interdisciplinary nature of literacy. It provides students with a high‐interest, creative platform to review, reinforce, and integrate learned literacy skills and strategies across the content areas. Tour Across America allows students the opportunity to become concert tour managers for a fictional band. This IPM framework is an appropriate supplemental activity for upper elementary through high school language arts classes, regardless of the students’ ability levels or socioeconomic status. This article contributes to the research on adolescent literacy in two ways: by demonstrating the importance of using IPM strategies to bridge the gap between in‐school literacies and out‐of‐school literacies, and by providing an activity that is effective and efficient at getting students to become literate across the content areas.