Description: The overall aim of this completed research has been to contribute to an ongoing discussion of the relation between communication and learning. Through studying how schools create arenas for communication these issues have been approached and an empirical study of how children communicate multimodally for participating in social activities in school settings was conducted (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress, 2003; Kress & Jewitt, 2003). The modes of communication that were focused on in this study were gestures, gaze and speech. The arenas for studying the communication were three different school arenas for five, six and seven year olds in the Swedish school system. The analysis high lightens five themes that can be considered examples of how differences in conditions of communication are constituted. Studying participation empirically, and positions of participation, exemplifies one way of putting changed participation on display in relation to learning. By doing so changed engagement in a surrounding world as a way of understanding learning can be approached empirically (Kress & Selander, in press). Methodology: The empirical material consists of ethnographic video recordings made in three Swedish school settings in an urban area from 2000 through 2003. Detailed transcripts and analysis of all the speech, gesture and gaze used by the children in the activities, were made of fifteen shorter sequences. Accompanying the analysis of the modes two different semiotic resources were especially included in the analysis - those of how the children use physical objects together with an analysis of the shape and content of the interior milieu.The analysis focuses on how the use of modes can be seen as means for taking different participatory positions in different activities. This is analysed with a starting point in studies of the how the possibility to communicate and interact has consequences for learning (Kress, et al. 2001, 2005; Evaldsson, 2001, 2004; Martin, 2004; Melander & Sahlström, 2004; Säljö, 2000;). Conclusions: The themes that the analysis resulted in are; the institutionalization of silence at school, the place of the body at school, how the physical object 'rubber' is a sign of competence of 'right and wrong', how negotiation appears at school settings as for instance a way of doing gender and finally, an example of a 'changed participation around a certain content as a way of creating social reference points'.The main results of the analysis show how the variety of use of modes in communication becomes ways to establish participation in social activity. Participation was looked at in two different ways -individual participation and group participation. These two positions of participation illustrate how the use of modes in different social activities takes different functions related to the concern of the activity. Both group participation and individual participation are used differently according to the framing of the activity, together with the possible use of physical objects, and the content of task changes the way modes are used. This analysis shows how children use modes and how the possible variation of modes is different with a growing age. The variations of the use of modes in the different school settings can be seen as a sign of changed principals for categorization, and thereby, how was further more argued, how communication is connected to learning.