Learning to Write With Interactive Writing Instruction

Figure 2 
Students Rereading to Monitor Meaning During 
Collaborative Writing

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FEATURE ARTICLE
The Reading Teacher Vol. 71 No. 5 March/April 2018 literacyworldwide.org
about their writing, they used specific phrases Diane 
often used. For example, when Drake was writing the 
word 
bike
, Wilson cautioned, “Careful! 
Bike
was our 
spelling word; you know how to spell 
bike
,” clearly 
imitating Diane’s dictum. When Wiley was trying to 
spell 
snake
(“snaknl”), he announced, “This is my best 
try,” emulating Diane’s directive to “Try your best” 
and continue writing. These examples illustrate how 
the students took up Diane’s instructional language 
and used it to direct their own and their peers’ writ-
ing (Dyson, 1983; Wertsch, 1998).
Importantly, we could only document what we 
were able to observe: the students’ overt use of 
Diane’s instruction. It was not possible to record 
students’ covert use of the concepts and strate-
gies that were taught. Our findings may not reflect 
the greater degree to which students used interac-
tive writing instruction to mediate their journal 
writing.
Discussion and Implications
Interactive writing instruction in Diane’s classroom 
epitomized what it meant to write. Every lesson 
showed students what writing is (composing) and 
taught them how to go about it (encoding) using so-
cial, cultural, and cognitive tools. Every lesson was 
an apprenticeship in learning to write (Dennen, 2004; 
Rogoff, 1990), and the pedagogical approach was suc-
cessful. Through their increasing engagement in the 
lessons, the students learned to write—to compose 
and encode text independently and collaboratively 
with peers using the tools Diane taught, including 
her instructional language (Lave & Wenger, 1991; 
Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1998). These findings cor-
roborate those of previous research on interactive 
writing instruction (e.g., Brotherton & Williams, 
2002; Craig, 2006; Hall, Toland, Grisham- Brown, & 
Graham, 2014; Jones et al., 2010; Roth & Guinee, 2011; 
Williams, 2011; Williams et al., 2012; Williams & 
Lundstrom, 2007).
Interactive writing also supported the students’ 
continued growth as writers by engaging them in 
evidence- based practices. First, for example, Diane 
taught both the lower level skills and higher level 
procedures of writing, which can improve students’ 
compositions (Berninger et al., 2002; De la Paz, 2001). 
Second, a key feature of every lesson was explicit 
strategy instruction and guided practice. When 
Diane prompted students to deliberately activate 
specific strategies, she supported their appropria-
tion of the self- regulatory behaviors that can pro-
mote independent writing and higher quality writing 
(Graham et al., 2005; Helsel & Greenberg, 2007; Tracy 
et al., 2009). Third, explicitly teaching specific vowels 
and consonants and then prompting students to use 
those letter sounds as they shared the pen or wrote 
on individual tablets was similar to the explicit pho-
nics instruction coupled with coaching for strategic 
application that Taylor, Pearson, Clark, and Walpole 
(2000) found among the most accomplished teachers 
and teachers in the most effective schools.
Further, when Diane shared the pen, and par-
ticularly when she gave students individual tablets, 
she shifted specific aspects of the collaborative writ-
ing activity to her apprentice writers. Now, students 
would take the lead in problem- solving the spelling 
of words and encoding the message. When teachers 
shift participation structures in the context of group 
writing events, they prepare students for taking up 
author roles when writing independently (Larson & 
Maier, 2000).