The aim of this study is to use data from video recordings of teaching at the second level of primary school to study the way in which different pupils contribute to class communication. We understand participation in teaching communication in terms of the overall length of time that individual pupils speak in lessons. We monitored this indicator on a sample of 82 pupils in four different classes. In the first part of the article we show through quantitative analysis that participation in communication in school class is not uniformly distributed, because pu¬pils with higher school success indicators take part to a greater extent. In the second part of the text, on the basis of qualitative interaction between one teacher and two pupils with different characteristics as to school success we demonstrate that models of participation are socially con¬structed in the course of interaction between teacher and pupils.