Literacy development involves not only the cultivation of new practices but also of new identities. Drawing on theories of stance and positioning, this study examines the identity negotiations of one first-grade student with his teacher across a semester. Through close analysis of the stance bids and negotiations within a series of writing conferences, it demonstrates how the pair negotiated between four stances (feedback, instruction, management and collaboration) in disrupting the student's initial institutional positioning as a struggling writer. These findings illustrate how teachers might use stance as a pedagogical tool, highlighting three patterns of negotiation between the pair that supported the development of the student's literate identities while showing how new discursive patterns and positions emerged as the pair interacted across a semester. This analysis suggests the necessity of negotiation as a pedagogical orientation in (re)positioning students, as well as the need to look across multiple timescales in examinations of identity.