Agency, accountability and affect: Kindergarten children's orchestration of reading with a friend

The aim of this study is to investigate children's orchestration of their own learning activities. Using a combined framework of participation and situated learning, I focus upon children's embodied directives that are launched in response to a peer's inattention to the reading. The analysis demonstrates: a) that reading together is achieved through children's use of complex, embodied resources (e.g., bald directive forms and touch) that close off activities competing for a peer's attention and which are calibrated in response to the child's non-compliance, and b) that the social force of directives is dependent on the way children overlay verbal directives with affective displays. Attention is also given to the way the teacher emphasizes how children organize their bodies for peer reading. By considering the instructional context along with children's own practices for maintaining order, this paper argues that children creatively adapt aspects of the adult culture to fit the goals of the peer social group, effectively imbuing learning to read with the pleasures of human sociality.