This article investigates the rules of schooling which might be new to recently immigrated adolescents with few prior experiences of school-based learning. The purpose was to study how the 'external grammar' (Gee 2005)--i.e. the thoughts, beliefs, values, actions and social interactions--associated with a classroom was negotiated in a language introductory school in Sweden. The ethnographic data were collected during one school year spent among ten students and their teachers. The analysis considers examples from the data that are ordered into three broad categories: chrono-spatial discipline, the use of literacy tools and practices, and being a student in relation to others. Some of these rules seemed to promote learning in this specific context, but also prepared the students for future studies, while other rules seemed adapted to these particular students' prerequisites for learning. Examples of some students challenging these rules are also analysed as a demonstration of students' agency.