A study investigated how and when writing is used at the elementary school level to determine (1) what kind of instructional support elementary students receive, (2) what prewriting support is provided, (3) what support for revising is offered, and (4) what happens to the students' writings. Using preservice teachers as observers, data were collected in 75 elementary classrooms (grades 1 through 6) over a 3-week period. Analysis of observations indicated that the most frequent kind of instructional support used prewriting, composing, revising for conventions or ideas, and "fate" (collecting, grading, and various types of publishing). While prewriting activities (such as direction giving or brainstorming) occurred previous to 79% of the writing, many of these activities were inappropriate as support activities. No revising occurred during 66% of writing instruction, but revising support did occur 34% of the time. "Fate" occurred after 86% of the writing, although true publishing involving a real audience occurred less than 30% of the time. Elementary students received very little high quality instructional support for developing into self-directing writers, in part because elementary teachers adhere to the traditional pedagogy of collecting and grading written work even though current research shows that this inhibits writing. (Tables of data are included.) (SRT)