As students experience multiliteracies across the curriculum through redefined standards, 21st century learning brings multimodal literacies to the forefront of teaching where educators are being required to use technology in their literacy instruction. When taking a New Literacies approach to meaning making from written text, educators must teach students the skills needed to understand how to navigate multimodal ensembles. With the evolution of literacy development and the rapid changes in technology, many elementary educators do not possess the understanding or ability to integrate multimodal literacies across the curriculum. Therefore, teachers will need to continue to look for research-based practices in order to bring multimodal literacy into the curriculum. Through a qualitative experimental design, this case study investigates how literacy lessons and the functions of individual modes assisted fifth-grade students in their meaning making of multimodal ensembles. This study seeks to provide an understanding of how multimodal ensembles that use modes like image, action, gesture, body posture, sound, text, music, and video can impact students' ability to make meaning. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]