Seatwork, defined as students working alone on an assigned task , often supported with teachers’ individual guidance, is a common activity in classrooms around the world (Alexander, 2001; O’Keefe, Xu, & Clarke, 2006; Sahlström, 2008). Research from Nordic classrooms shows additionally, that that the amount of individual seatwork is increasing (Carlgren, Klette, Myrdal, Schnack, & Simola, 2006; Klette et al., 2009). Despite the fact that teachers’ individual guidance is  a frequent lesson activity in  primary classrooms (Alexander, 2001; Klette, 2003) , it is often described as ”the invisible teaching method” (Alexander, 2001, p. 407). There is lack of knowledge about teachers’ instructional practices during  seatwork, and the knowledge on teachers’ individual guidance is limited (Alexander, 2001; Haug, 2006; Klette, 2003; Klette et al., 2009). In this paper we will explore teachers’ instructional practices during seatwork in Norwegian Language arts. We use teachers in 3^rd grade (8-9 years old students) in primary classrooms as an object of study. The purpose is to increase our understanding of teachers’ instructional practices during individual guidance in primary school. An additional aim is to create an analytical tool for analyzing teachers’ individual guidance in Language arts classrooms.

Research questions

1. What characterizes the teacher’s instructional practices during students’ seatwork in Norwegian Language arts?
   1. Which strategies do teachers make use of in their instructional support?

Theoretical framework

The teacher’s activities during students’ seatwork have different functions. Pienta & Hamre (2009) and Klette (2013) distinguish between instructional support; organizational support and emotional support as three key elements in teachers’ instructional practices.

For the purpose of analyzing individual guidance, we combine two areas which traditionally are not talking to each other: teachers’ feedback practices and research on teachers’ instructional classroom practices. A central part of the teacher’s individual guidance is oral feedback from teacher to student. Feedback research has got a lot of attention the last years, and John Hattie (2008) ranks feedback on his top ten list in terms of students’ achievement. For the case of writing instruction most feedback research have focused on teachers’ written feedback on students’ written texts. There may, however, be differences between teachers’ well designed and carefully prepared written feedback and the elusive (on the spot) oral feedback, since the last one is provided in situ in complex classroom settings. Research on oral writing conferences at the primary level confirms the complexity and dynamic in these situations (Glasswell & Parr, 2009; Perumanathan, 2014).

Research from whole class teaching has demonstrated different teaching strategies, and one fundamental difference is between the dichotomies telling and challenging. “Telling” means that the teacher tells or gives the answer to the student. “Challenging” is a common term for teaching approaches intended to challenge student’s thinking. Studies of expert teachers argue that accomplished teachers prefer coaching instead of telling in their literacy instruction (Allington & Johnston, 2002; Taylor, Pearson, Peterson, & Rodriguez, 2005). Challengingstudents’ thinking is thus seen as decisive for students’ cognitive engagement in Language arts (Grossman, Loeb, Cohen, & Wyckoff, 2013; Taylor et al., 2005).

In sum these five main categories and 15 subcategories serve as an analytical framework for discharging teachers’ instructional practices during individual guidance linked to writing instruction in primary classrooms:

Instructional support

• Telling/giving answer
• Challenging student thinking
• Learning goals
• Modeling
• Confirming

Emotional support

• Non-task related talk

Organizational  support   

• Practical help
• Correction,  redirection
• Task and activity management

Monitoring

• Monitoring working process
• Listening to student read

No direct interaction with students

• Clearing/organizing classroom
• Talking to another adult

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