Interactive writing: a powerful teaching strategy

Interactive Writing is a teaching strategy which provides opportunities for the explicit teaching of both authorial skills (text structure, grammar, vocabulary) and secretarial skills (spelling, punctuation and handwriting) as well as reading. Children become apprentice writers who work alongside an experienced writer (the teacher). The teacher and children share the authorship, and ownership, of co-constructed texts. Interactive Writing is particularly effective in the first two years of school although Wall (2008) has successfully applied the strategy with third grade students. 'This strategy is designed to utilise what children already know and can do (collectively), to teach them new skills and provide reasons for writingâ'� (Mackenzie, 2010, p.27).