Six words of writing, many layers of significance : An examination of writing as social practice in an early grade classroom

This paper explores a six-year-old child's text that he wrote at school. We explore this text in order to demonstrate how even a simple text embodies many complex aspects of writing. These aspects include how writers represent texts, compose meaning, achieve social purposes, and position readers. We more deeply examine these aspects of writing practices in terms of contexts of situation and culture in which a child writes. In this examination, we consider how a child's experiences, predispositions and resources form a significant part of their classroom writing context.