Abstract

In this paper we describe a study on first graders' participation in school activities. Based on the video-recordings of classroom interactions, the paper focuses in particular on three topics. The first considers the pupils' participation in class activities and its implications in terms of teaching and learning processes; the second focuses on the public and shared nature of classroom discourse; the third concerns the strategies that teachers employ in order to re-establish a relationship with the most disruptive pupils after warning and scolding them directly. We argue that the analysis of interactive sequences in classroom discourse illuminates our understanding of the daily co-construction of meaning attributed by participants to their interactions.