ABSTRACT
As suggested during the conversation I had with Jay about the ladybug text, we were also engaged at this time in revising a report he had been assigned about bald eagles. Writing was one way in which Jay was marked as different by Laura in her classroom, and it had a direct impact on his grades. Laura’s perceptions of Jay’s abilities as a writer were shaped by his classroom performance, in contexts where he was most often required to write alone and often as a form of assessment. In describing Jay’s abilities in these contexts, Laura noted that, “He’s not a good writer, but he’ll write, just write-write- write-write, and not a period in the whole thing. You know, he can get things on paper, but it’s not on there very well. He would much rather talk about it.”
