Interactive writing is a process‐oriented instructional approach designed to make the composing and encoding processes of writing overt and explicit for young students who are learning to write. It is particularly suitable for students who struggle with literacy learning. This article describes one first‐grade teacher's use of interactive writing to teach her students what it means to write and how they could go about it. The project documents the writing processes, conventions, and strategies that the teacher taught during interactive writing lessons across one academic year and illustrates how the students learned and subsequently used those conceptual tools to mediate their independent writing. Results of the project demonstrate the expediency of interactive writing instruction for supporting the learning‐to‐write process and hold important implications for writing instruction in the early childhood program.