Classroom language and literacy practices need to be reconceptualized to account for the valuable role talk and interaction play in the process of learning to write. Teachers should construct learning environments within which interaction between students and teachers is the primary focus. The participation framework of kindergarten journal writing activity constitutes a shared indexical ground within which the social process of learning to write may occur. The concept of indexicality is grounded in language socialization theory and can be defined as the relationship of properties of speech to cultural contexts (such as the participation framework) and how this relationship constitutes particular stances and acts in activity. The participation framework is socially constructed over time. Teacher and student in the kindergarten classroom socialize each other to discrete roles within an instructional participation framework, thereby creating a normative structure for participation in writing activity. Data were drawn from an ethnographic study of kindergarten journal writing activity that examined how a context for the social distribution and appropriation of literacy knowledge was constituted in situated participation frameworks. Five interconnected roles were identified that contributed to the socially mediated knowledge distribution process: teacher/scribe, primary author, overhearer, peripheral respondent, and pivot. The teacher uses multiple indexes to indicate the instructional goal of independent writing. The combination of gesture and shifts in register directly indexes approval or praise and simultaneously indirectly indexes the larger instructional goal of independent writing to the group as a whole. (Contains examples of interactions and 33 references.) (TB)