Many people believe that interactive writing is primarily done in a whole group setting, but based on student data, (from running records and writing samples from writing workshop) the best small group instruction that demonstrates the early behavior characteristics of a Level A (according to Fountas and Pinnell) would be to create an interactive writing book together working with those students who need extra support moving from Emergent reading to a level A.

The students that I'm working with, based on their running records, showed no evidence of onetoone matching, showed no evidence of matching beginning sounds of words to the pictures shown, and showed no evidence of high frequency word knowledge.

By creating a small book together, the students will take ownership of each page and also see how we use the high frequency words in context to make it more meaningful.

The purpose of interactive writing is working on spelling practices, phonics, phonemic awareness, and writing conventions by "interactively" composing the piece together while sharing the pen.