School students work on a variety of tasks in their daily lessons. But what happens when they work on tasks? How do pupils deal with reading and writing tasks and what kind of logic do they develop in the process? The author uses a reconstructive and interpretative research approach to investigate how pupils work cooperatively on reading and writing tasks in beginning language lessons. In line with interpretative teaching research, the situating of the task contexts and the forms of interaction during processing are of importance. Against this background, task processing is understood as a complex co-construction that takes place in the interplay of task format, materiality of the task, teacher behaviour and student interaction.