The articles address the ways English language arts/literacy researchers, teacher educators and teachers might take up these findings in their own work, bridging multimodal theories with youth contexts. The result is a portrait of multimodal text design in early childhood spaces that reminds us, as readers, why we need to create space for children to draw on multiple literacy resources, from digital resources to human resources. In this research, she draws upon members of a kindergarten classroom and reports how these young children enact and embody reading practices, looking specifically at how they respond to and construct meaning from non-fiction picture books. Shimek’s multimodal analysis of the interactions of three boys shows the connections these children demonstrate through their physical movements during the reading process and how this helps them to understand abstract concepts, communicate with others and enact the meaning they make.
Guest editorial