Based on a year-long interpretive research project, this article describes the arrangements for collaborative writing in an urban elementary classroom. In contrast to typical descriptions of collaboration, this study suggests a more complex view, one that includes a range of ways for students to participate in writing together. This study begins to answer the following questions: What happens when teachers allow students to talk as they write? What does a classroom look like when collaboration is conceptualized as more than a technique, but as a way to understand students as members of a writing community? In this classroom, collaborative writing included the following arrangements: Students wrote alone and shared their work with others; they wrote in pairs or small, consistent groups called networks; and they worked together to author a single text. Brief case studies are used to illustrate each of these types of collaboration. This study describes the ways students responded to opportunities for collaboration. Collaboration was more than a technique; through interactions with peers, students developed their own voices and ways of writing.
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