första naturvetenskapliga skoltexterna

In a research project conducted in a multilingual classroom, the teaching practice and pupils’ texts are studied during their first years of schooling. The teaching practice entails explicit teaching of text structures and experiences for the students to use in their writing. The aim of the study, presented here, is to investigate students’ first school texts, students’ relations to their texts and the texts’ relation to the teaching practice. The material of the study consists of pupils’ written texts, and data are also collected by observations and interviews. The study draws on dialogism, systemic functional linguistics and theories of the language of schooling. The main theoretical framework is supplemented by theories of second language acquisition and discoursal construction of writer identity. The main findings of the analysis are that the students in their texts make use of the teaching of text structures and the experiences they were involved in. The texts are characterized by everyday knowledge and language, as well as attempts to use scientific knowledge and language. The students show high text movability, i.e. ability talk about their texts in different ways, which indicates their potentials to take discourse roles and positioning themselves in the texts.