An ethnographic study explored how small groups of student readers interacted in a classroom over time to interpret short stories assigned by a teacher. For five weeks, eight sixth-grade volunteers met on consecutive Fridays in two separate face-to-face discussion groups to read, discuss, rewrite, and perform a short story as a play. Primary data were transcripts of participant talk recorded during the five meetings and during performance. Transcripts of talk were analyzed using a discourse analysis system. Results indicated that the fragmented nature of group 1's day-to-day social interactions was reflected in and reflected the fragmented nature of the interpretive texts created by group 1 participants, while the cohesive nature of group 2's day-to-day social interactions was reflected in and reflected the coherence in the interpretive texts created by group 2 participants. Findings make visible the relationship between the academic and social nature of classroom talk accomplishment as task groups made meaning using texts of narrative fiction. Findings also suggest a need to expand literary response theory and to develop research perspectives that can account for the social aspects of reader response when reading takes place in group situations and the social aspect becomes dominant. (Contains 12 references and two tables of data. An appendix of data, the short story, and the group performance texts are attached.) (RS)