Interactive Writing

I love to use interactive writing as a means for labeling our room. and filling up our walls.

During our first grade color days at the beginning of the year, we make a collage for each color day. Over the summer, I go through the magazines I have saved over the year and roughly cut/ tear out 25-30 pictures in each of the 10 colors. I label a gallon storage baggie with each color to store the pictures.

On the color day, we interactive write the color word and then I pass out a magazine picture to each friend. Friends are responsible for carefully cutting out the picture and then gluing it on to our collage. (11x17 piece of construction paper) I enlarge the color word we wrote during interactive writing and add it to the middle of our collage.

We also interactive write the numerals and number words at the beginning of the year. I add dots to make them into dominoes and enlarge our writing as necessary. They are displayed on my back cupboards. We refer to it as our “number wall”.

The kids love to read the color words and the number words during read the room.

Displaying their interactive writing also gives the students a sense of ownership in our classroom. Sometimes I let my desire to make things "cute" take over and then the things on my walls just become wallpaper. Interactive writing is a meaningful use of wall space. Plus, I think nothing looks more "first grade adorable"!

~ Rebecca

*When I was working on my undergrad, I had the wonderful opportunity to work as a TA in a kindergarten classroom and then in the same teacher’s first grade classroom. She was a true master at interactive writing. The credit for both these ideas belongs to her! Shout out to you Julie Porter!