Changes in the teacher's authority structure as well as changes in the content of student talk during peer response sessions occur over the course of a school year in a first-grade classroom. In the beginning of the year, the teacher, a beginner in the Teachers College Writing Project, dominated the talk during share sessions, while the students' talk consisted of generic praise and focused on logistical issues about texts. The authority structure changed over the course of the year to allow for students taking more control of the dialogue and focusing on ideas and content within student texts. The change in authority structure seemed to be reflected through a change in the nature of the content of what students say and what they attend to in the texts they hear. The teacher still expressed her control in various ways, however, such as designating who should speak, moving the dialogue along, and offering her own interpretations which tended to constrain alternative interpretations. Even at the end of the year, it was not evident that students built upon one another's ideas in any traceable pattern. These limitations point to the need to change classroom norms and the fact that these are difficult to change, particularly teachers' need for classroom control. (Author/JB)