Growing in the Disciplinary Literacy of Writing: Videotaped Peer Talk and Reflection in a Sixth-Grade Classroom

To determine the key aspects of writing as a disciplinary literacy evident in videotaped peer talk during the writing process.

Sixth-grade students talk with peers during the writing process, the peer talk is videotaped and played back to the participants, and students reflect on the impact of peer talk on their writing.

This study gains sixth-grade students’ perspectives on how they experience talk in the disciplinary literacy of writing. Students use the content knowledge of writing and discuss habits of thinking specific to the disciplinary literacy of writing.

These findings are from a sixth-grade classroom, under the guidance of an exemplary English language arts teacher who encouraged daily writing and peer talk. Without these instructional routines and classroom talk, alternate findings may emerge.

This chapter makes a significant contribution to the field of writing as disciplinary literacy and the use of video as a mediational tool. The chapter foregrounds the voices and perspectives of sixth-grade students to understand how students themselves experience and view talk in the context of disciplinary literacy of writing.