page 146 Language Arts, Volume 97, Number 3, January 2020 Robin Jocius The CLICK Model: Scaffolding Multimodal Composing for Academic Purposes This article describes the CLICK model, which aims to support students’ multimodal composing practices through balancing explicit scaffolding with opportunities to exercise creative freedom. was unsuccessful, at least for this particular group of third graders. For Ellie, the iMovie trailer tem- plates offered valuable support—she was able to select from a curated set of design options (e.g., music clips, fonts, backgrounds, and colors), which provided enough fexibility and freedom for her to feel a sense of ownership over her composition. Jes- sica, by contrast, was constrained by the limitations of the template, which restricted her ability to use multiple video clips to tell the story she had imag- ined. As I refected on students’ wildly different reactions to both the digital book trailer task and the iMovie trailer tool, I found myself fascinated by one question: How can educators interested in multi- modal composing balance explicit scaffolding with creative freedom to support students with different composing identities and preferences? This article describes the CLICK model, which aims to cultivate students’ multimodal compos- ing processes through fve scaffolding principles: (1) collaboration; (2) loops; (3) incremental com- posing; (4) critique; and (5) knowledge of mul- timodal composing processes. First, I describe the history of multimodal meaning-making, as well as the promise and peril of providing explicit scaffolding for multimodal composing activities. Then, I illustrate how I developed, tested, and refned the CLICK model during Project ONEE, a study of grade 3 students’ multimodal composing I love it. This was my favorite thing we’ve ever done this year. I really like that we could choose our pictures and music and backgrounds to think about how Via [character from the novel Wonder] felt and how she might want to show who she is. —Ellie, grade 3 It looks just like everybody else did theirs. I wanted to have like the video clips in there, but the program wouldn’t let me. The sound wouldn’t work and the music had to play. . . . It’s all busted. —Jessica, grade 3 Ellie and Jessica’s words illustrate the prom- ise and peril of explicit scaffolding for multimodal composing in academic environments—and the diffculty of developing structured multimodal composing experiences that account for students’ unique composing needs. As part of a project focus- ing on third graders’ understanding of selected texts featuring characters with disabilities or differences, Ellie, Jessica, and their classmates were tasked with developing digital book trailers based on the novel Wonder (Palacio, 2012). The initial goal of using the highly scaffolded iMovie trailer templates, which provide pre-selected graphics and fonts, sto- ryboarding support, and step-by-step instructions, was to support students as they learned to navigate different technological tools, modes, and ideas. However, it quickly became clear that a univer- sal approach to scaffolding multimodal composing