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This paper reports on an ethnographic study conducted with two Year 1 classes in two different Norwegian schools. In total, 35 five- and six-year-old children were involved in the study and were observed over a two-month period as they engaged in learning activities that involved drawing. Building on Kress and Van Leeuwen's (1996) theory of a visual "grammar", this study draws attention to the ways that visual features in drawings made by the children in their first year in school can be found to carry ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning. This paper discusses the similarities and variations in the types of meaning the children make and the interests that seem to have motivated the children. It argues that a focus on drawing can help practitioners support and promote children's visual literacy, and suggests pedagogical implications in light of the study. To begin, the research topic is related to a definition of literacy that encompasses multiple semiotic systems. (Contains 11 figures.)

This study explores how toddlers and caregivers make meaning with an interactive healthcare game on a tablet during medical treatment. The data material consists of video recordings of six nebuliser treatments of two children. Using a social semiotic perspective and a multimodal analysis, the study identifies how children and caregivers make meaning with the game, defined as a multimodal text, through creating text events. The findings illustrate how the participants' meaning-making in the text events appears to have a narrative and an analytical orientation. It is suggested that the potential of healthcare games lies in the creation of text events where the game constitutes a shared focus. When children and caregivers share their meaning-making orientations, the medical treatment can be brought into the background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]