In this article, I share results from a year-long qualitative study that focused on the emergent production of a classroom culture and the social identities most valued in that culture. I collected observational data, interview data and archival data throughout the school year in one self-contained fourth-grade classroom. Using a combination of analytic strategies drawn from grounded theory and critical discourse analysis, I constructed an account of key generative routinized practices/performances that contributed in powerful and pervasive ways to the emergent production of a classroom culture and the social identities encouraged/afforded within that culture. The practices were practising family, practising care, practising fourth-grade professionalism, practising literature-life connections and practising democracy. Accounting for and interpreting these practices in considerable detail allowed me to argue for how generative routinized practices can produce dynamic but durable classroom cultures that exert powerful effects on children's developing social identities, their dispositions towards participation and their learning.