A study investigated the effectiveness of a Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) program in an elementary school bilingual classroom with exclusively Mexican-American students (n=35). Because cooperative learning strategies are based on peer interaction and participants contributing to the common goal, the videotaped interactions of four male students during the daily (four days a week) use of CIRC were analyzed to infer and identify teaching and learning strategies that might explain student skill acquisition during CIRC activities. The teaching strategies included were modeling, contingency management, providing feedback, instructing, questioning, and cognitive structuring. The interactions between the two high-reading ability students changed over time; interaction decreased in quantity, and the students stopped being actively engaged in answering questions and often worked on different questions. Interactions between the lower-reading-ability pair were much more frequent, involved much monitoring and active negotiation of answers, and were characterized by assistance-seeking from a teacher-aide. Both dyads used most of the strategies investigated. It is concluded that more than assisted performance theory is needed to guide analysis of student interactions, because the approach used here is too limited. A 15-item bibliography is included. (MSE)