The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of task based writing instruction (TBwI) on English language acquisition and differentiated instruction for minority language students during the Independent Work Time instructional component of the Open Court Reading program. One teacher and 10 third grade students (8-9 years old) participated in this mixed methods study. TBwI was a platform for communicative language teaching. Together they recast the students' written interlanguage embedded within the writing samples into standard English. The study took place after school, 45 minutes per day for one month, resulting in 35 transcribed writing conferences, writing samples, and interviews. Results indicate that TBwI can be a useful vehicle for differentiated instruction, constructivist pedagogy, and principles of second language acquisition to address the diverse needs of second language learners. (Five appendixes are included: (1) Participant Summary Data; (2) Writing Prompts; (3) Sample Writing Conference; (4) Recruitment Tools; and (5) Development of Criteria for Data Coding. Contains 14 figures and 1 table.) [Master's Thesis, University of Southern California.]