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This paper is a case study of two occasions of teacher response, shaping, and evaluation of students' texts. In one case, the text is oral — a “sharing time” contribution by a first grader. In the second case the text is written — a sixth grader's composition about a favorite circus act. The two examples are taken from different classrooms at different grade levels. Nonetheless, they evidence striking parallels in regard to teacher-assigned task, text structure, and teacher–student interaction.

Both students attempt to introduce personal knowledge or experience into a simple descriptive account. In doing so, they use complex associative strategies which entail shifts in topic, time, and focal characters. In both cases, the teachers have difficulty interpreting the students' texts, which lack lexical or graphic markers of the associative shifts, and which are not organized in the way the teachers were expecting. In the end both teachers …