According to the curriculum Sweden’s elementary school is to educate students in subjects such as "Listening, debating and argumentation". I ask myself if this is actually something that every student is being provided with. The purpose of this study is to gain additional information about children’s participation in the classroom. This is done from the children’s perspective by examining how students in first grade experience their roll in the conversation between and in relation to the teacher. In order to get subjective as well as an objective perspective qualitative methods are used in this essay. First I observed the children in the classroom and then I interviewed six of them.

The main questions at issue are:

• How do children in first grade experience their own participation in the classroom?
• In what situations do the children in first grade sense they are allowed to speak with the teacher in the classroom?
• What is significant for the different situations in which the children in first grade get to have a conversation with the teacher?

Dialogue and Participation is two essential concepts throughout the study and according to research highly associated and therefore necessary to examine together. As showed in the results of the study several students in first grade didn’t feel participant enough in the classroom and all of the students wanted to converse more during the lesson. Results also show that the students who raised their hands were the ones who had well functioning social capacity and they also got more attention than other students.