This chapter examines the characteristics of collaborative learning in the context of the middle years of schooling. Classroom practices associated with individual representation, comparison, explanation, justification and validation are examined in order to explore how these practices allow collaborative activity to take place. An episode of student talk collected in a Year 7 classroom that had (as its goal) the collective construction of knowledge is examined in order to illustrate the nature of learning within a collaborative classroom. Students' reflections on this learning are reported in a fashion that illustrates the long-term effects of participation in collaborative classroom activities on students' identities as learners.