Lesson plan

Interactive writing

Interactive writing has been described by Swartz (2001) as "a teaching method in which children and teacher negotiate what they are going to write and then share the pen to construct the message." Interactive writing is a cooperative event in which text is jointly composed and written. The teacher uses the interactive writing session to model reading and writing strategies as he or she engages children in creating text. Interactive writing was also included by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell as part of their balanced literacy framework. Similar to shared writing, interactive writing allows a teacher and students to literally "share the pen" to create a joint sentence or message. Typically used in the primary grades, interactive writing is a powerful instructional medium for teaching phonics, spelling principles, rimes, writing conventions, and other key early writing skills. Others have described interactive writing differently as a method used in literacy teaching, especially for young children, whereby the students have the opportunity to practice their reading, studying and writing skills in a safe and creative environment. In this method the teacher(s) and students write to each other, by means of letters, dialogue journals or a message board. The students are free to choose the topic and the length of their writings.…

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Article summary

Interactive writing has been described by Swartz (2001) as "a teaching method in which children and teacher negotiate what they are going to write and then share the pen to construct the message." Interactive writing is a cooperative event in which text is jointly composed and written. The teacher uses the interactive writing session to model reading and writing strategies as he or she engages children in creating text. Interactive writing was also included by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell as part of their balanced literacy framework. Similar to shared writing, interactive writing allows a teacher and students to literally "share the pen" to create a joint sentence or message. Typically used in the primary grades, interactive writing is a powerful instructional medium for teaching phonics, spelling principles, rimes, writing conventions, and other key early writing skills. Others have described interactive writing differently as a method used in literacy teaching, especially for young children, whereby the students have the opportunity to practice their reading, studying and writing skills in a safe and creative environment. In this method the teacher(s) and students write to each other, by means of letters, dialogue journals or a message board. The students are free to choose the topic and the length of their writings.…

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  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

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