Framed within interactional sociolinguistics, microethnographic discourse analysis, and cognitive science, we examine how intercontextuality, collective memories, and classroom chronotopes were used in generating learning opportunities in a ninth-grade language arts classroom. Five consecutive videorecorded lessons were analyzed focusing on how the teacher and students constructed relationships among past, present, and future events and contexts. Among the grounded theoretical constructs generated were (1) that the teacher and students socially constructed collective memories as interpretive frames for their reading and writing; and (2) they juxtaposed and problematized differing chronotopes in constructing learning opportunities and building a curriculum. We view these grounded theoretical constructs as contributions to current discussions of the nature and use of time in classrooms. (Contains 1 figure, 2 diagrams, and 7 notes.)