Put simply, multi-modality refers to many modes or forms; many different ways of representing meanings though a variety of media - including speech, gestures, dens, piles of things, cut-outs, junk models, drawings, languages, symbols and texts, (Kress, 1997; Carruthers and Worthington, 2006).

Kress argues that meaning-making develops through children’s active engagement with ‘lots of different stuff’. Role play; small world play; junk modelling and cutting out (Pahl, 1999) and drawing and painting (Matthews, 2003) all provide contexts through which the beginnings of early (emergent) writing and children’s mathematical graphics grow.

Just as the infant may pick up a block or a banana and holding it to her ear to mean (pretend) that it is a telephone, so they gradually come to attach meanings to their earliest marks. Multi-modality has been recognised within children’s written language texts in the curriculum in England (QCA, 2004) though is as yet largely unknown in Early Years settings and schools in the U.K. There is widespread interest in multi-modality in Australia.

It is evident that children’s own mathematical graphics – their mathematical ‘texts’ are also multi-modal, with children choosing different marks and ways of representing that we term forms.

"It's my birthday bridge": multi-modal meanings in play

Multi-modality, play and children's mark-making in maths