This theory-into-practice paper integrates Tomasello's concept of Joint Attentional Frames and well-known ideas related to the work of Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, with more recent ideas from social semiotics. Classroom procedures for incorporating student-created Joint Attentional Frames into literacy lessons are explained by links to video data and a presentation of an exemplar case. This paper is intended to open several semi-structured, flexible avenues for systematically and collectively researching and integrating digital video cameras into classroom language/literacy learning practice and into the wider adult education, pre-college education, and ESL/EFL communities. The action-research case-study methodology presents an exemplar case who illustrates how learners use digital video cameras to organize and present Speech, a Visual, and the Act of Pointing to create and evaluate meaning, specifically abstract relationships of supporting details to main ideas during the process of writing a formal academic summary.