Teacher-child and peer talk in collaborative writing and writing-mediated play: Primary classrooms in Northern Canada

Abstract

This research examines teacher-child and peer interactions during collaborative writing and writing-mediated play in 10 northern Canadian primary classrooms. Purposes of children’s and teachers’ language in these informal writing contexts, captured in video-recordings, were analysed inductively. In the play-mediated writing context, where children created texts as needed to support their dramatic play narratives, children were more likely to use language to explain purposes and meanings of the text they created as part of dramatic play narratives. In the collaborative writing contexts involving teacher-assigned texts, children more frequently talked about the letters and sounds of words, or the details of drawings in their texts. In both contexts, children used language for affiliative purposes, as the demands of the collaborative settings required that they find ways to get along with each other. Teachers’ language was often for typical instructional purposes (e.g., building on children’s knowledge of print and helping them to work together) and for affiliative purposes (e.g., to show interest in children’s writing and in their play narratives). Additionally, in dramatic play-mediated writing contexts, teachers frequently used language to model social conventions of the play contexts. In the collaborative writing contexts, teachers more frequently directed children’s behaviour to ensure that all children could participate in the tasks. Our findings show that collaborative writing and writing as part of dramatic play provide contexts for authentic interactions around text construction and for supporting children’s abilities to collaborate. These contexts offer promising alternatives to mainstream views of exemplary writing instruction that involve planned lessons with teachers’ questions and modelling and feedback on students’ independent writing.)