The article reports on a study where teachers in early primary school were presented to tools to approach texts and meaning-­making from a multimodal perspective. The study aims to develop knowledge of enabling and constraining factors for the development of a multimodal assessment practice. To do so, we examine how teachers’ understanding of quality in students’ multimodal texts is manifested in assessments, and how this relates to available tools. The findings are discussed with the help of Bernstein's (1990; 2000) theoretical frame-­work and focus on the conditions for teachers' work and learning. The study demonstrates teachers’ attention to multimodal text quality as ability to follow writing conventions, organize text and communicate content with several interacting resources. Available tools shape and broaden what is noticed. However, to give content to the meta-­language further knowledge on the use of different semiotic resources is needed. The study hereby raises the importance of interdisciplinary perspective on multimodal assessment.