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Worksheets are common in science classrooms with an aim to support pupils’ meaning-making, e.g., for guiding them in performing hands-on activities and documenting their experiences of such activities. Yet, there have been few systematic studies of pupils’ disciplinary representations in worksheets. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics, we have analyzed fifth grade pupils’ (age 10–11) multimodal texts in worksheets (n = 25) when they were working with shadow formation as part of their regular classroom activities. In the worksheets they were asked to first explain in writing why or why not a shadow was formed and then explain shadow formation through a drawing. At an overall level, we found that a majority of the pupils managed to express in writing why a shadow is formed, though it appeared to be more challenging for them to explain why a shadow is not formed. In their drawings, quite a few pupils managed to include several key aspects of shadow formation, at least when combining image with writing. For all tasks, the explanatory parts of the pupils’ responses were often implicit. Based on our results, we suggest that pupils may benefit from teaching practices that integrate a parallel focus on form and content as a way to raise their awareness of, for instance, the affordances of different resources and how explanations can be structured. Such practices may support pupils to be able to consider and choose appropriate resources in their disciplinary texts.

Most pupils become confident with narrative texts. However, studies show that pupils do not learn to master discursive genres in a satisfactory way. Therefore it is important to study pupils' written argumentation and to develop knowledge about text production in an education that also highlights linguistic structures. The present article investigates written argumentations produced by 10-12 year-old pupils. The aim is to investigate perspectives in the texts, and thereby catch the entire texts-their content, function and form-and to relate text analysis to interaction in the classroom. The theoretical framework emanates from the dialogical and triadic conception of language and text where ideational, relational and textual aspects play a central role. In this article the focus is on the three perspective dimensions-relief, hierarchy and sequences-in one argumentative text written by a 10-year-old girl and the discursive practice within which her text is produced.

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One central issue for research in classrooms is to provide insights concerning characteristics of classroom interaction that can help teachers improve their teaching. In the present study, we analyse spoken interaction in one elementary physics classroom by the use of two different frameworks, targeting similar aspects of social communication, namely how discourse patterns shape the relations between participants. The two frameworks utilized are on the one hand analyses of the communicative approach according to Mortimer and Scott, combined with analyses of discourse patterns such as IRE-patterns, and on the other hand analyses related to the interpersonal meta-function in Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar, SFG. The aim was to highlight possibilities and limitations of the different frameworks.  Our analyses reveal that the two analytical frameworks have partly the same, partly different affordances concerning what they can reveal about classroom interaction. The analyses of the communicative approaches have the potential of elucidating discursive patterns and power relations at a general level, while the analyses based on SFG can provide more details about the power relations in terms of how the participants actually structure their utterances. The results are also discussed regarding implications for education.

In a research project conducted in a multilingual classroom, the teaching practice and pupils’ texts are studied during their first years of schooling. The teaching practice entails explicit teaching of text structures and experiences for the students to use in their writing. The aim of the study, presented here, is to investigate students’ first school texts, students’ relations to their texts and the texts’ relation to the teaching practice. The material of the study consists of pupils’ written texts, and data are also collected by observations and interviews. The study draws on dialogism, systemic functional linguistics and theories of the language of schooling. The main theoretical framework is supplemented by theories of second language acquisition and discoursal construction of writer identity. The main findings of the analysis are that the students in their texts make use of the teaching of text structures and the experiences they were involved in. The texts are characterized by everyday knowledge and language, as well as attempts to use scientific knowledge and language. The students show high text movability, i.e. ability talk about their texts in different ways, which indicates their potentials to take discourse roles and positioning themselves in the texts.

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This study reports on a case study about multimodal work in a primary physics classroom focusing on forces. Previous research reports that students benefit from multimodal work in science classrooms. Yet, few systematic studies have been performed to reveal how students represent their experiences and ideas of science phenomena over time within and across different semiotic modes (e.g., through action, speech, writing, and image, including multimodal ensembles). The design of the lessons was built around a number of experimental activities, starting with a puzzling phenomenon and where students for each experiment predicted, observed, described, and tried to come up with explanations. Based on social‐semiotics, we combined analysis at an overall level (long timescale and large grain size) and a detailed level (short timescale and small grain size) to shed light on how the science content was represented within and between modes over the teaching and learning period, and what content was expressed in these representations. Our findings reveal how students moved from focusing on attributes such as a “heavy” regarding artifacts used in the experiments, towards the central physics processes, such as one object exerting force on another object. Furthermore, we were able to detect that such “signs of learning” were shown in students’ small‐group discussions and multimodal texts following a carefully orchestrated multimodal exposition by the teacher. Hence, such a careful multimodal orchestration appeared to be critical for the students’ meaning‐making about the science content.