Learning to Write With Interactive Writing Instruction

Resources for Topics
The students wrote on topics of their choosing and 
in a variety of genres. “I like” and “My friends” texts 
were popular early in the year, as were personal ex-
periences and pop culture. Later in the year, students 
composed informational texts and realistic fiction, 
often anchored in books from the classroom library. 
On 33 occasions, we observed students f lipping 
through and reading pages from books, illustrated 
dictionaries, and encyclopedias to identify topics and 
gather ideas. When Kyle and Kirby were writing an 
informational text about dinosaurs, Kirby suggested 
that they “look for hints” in 
A Dictionary of Dinosaurs

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FEATURE ARTICLE
The Reading Teacher Vol. 71 No. 5 March/April 2018 literacyworldwide.org
by Rupert Matthews. After reading pages of 
Zoo Train!
by Lissa Rovetch, Ethan and Andrew decided to write 
a story titled “If I Ran the Zoo.”
Monitoring Meaning 
and Sustaining Composing
The students planned, drafted, revised, and edited 
their texts, just as they had during interactive writ-
ing. They typically planned their text aloud before 
they started writing, and some students counted 
the number of words to be written. Gwen once an-
nounced that she had planned “waaaay more words 
than [she] ever wrote before!” When writing collab-
oratively, students negotiated each sentence as they 
drafted it. The students frequently reread their texts 
to access the next word to be written and to monitor 
the comprehensibility of their messages. Rereading 
often led to revision and editing, particularly when 
the text did not make sense, as illustrated in this ex-
cerpt (see Figure 2):
Patrick and Wilson are writing a fantasy about the “stuff” 
they would buy if they had “a million and 100 dollars.” 
They have written three sentences and are drawing 
dollar bills as illustrations. Wilson announces that he 
is “fixin’ to put one in the clouds!” and Patrick affirms, 
“That’s where they come from, man!” Then Wilson sug-
gests a fourth sentence: “We can buy a hot driving car 
with spinnin’ wheels.” Patrick writes, “We can buy a hot 
car driving with spinners
.
” Both boys reread, and Patrick 
asks, “Does that make sense?” to which Wilson replies, 
“No.” Wilson erases 
car driving
and writes 
driving car,
and 
both boys reread again: “We can buy a hot driving car 
with spinners.” Satisfied, they begin coloring the dollar 
bills green. Later, they start a fifth sentence.
We observed students rereading more than 100 
times as they moved through the recursive phases 
of the composing process.