The home's supportive setting, which has the potential to encourage children to share their thoughts and feelings through spoken language, is the basis of the home's strength as a communicative context. Teachers can help extend this sharing of meaning by creating classroom environments in which written language experiences and microcomputer-based writing and reading activities are surrounded by familiar spoken language. One example of interactive software, Story Maker, enhances the classroom's communicative context by helping children concentrate on the structure and content of narratives rather than on the mechanical aspects of writing. A child using Story Maker has an opportunity to simultaneously play the roles of writer and reader as stories are created from structural branches of a story tree. A second example of interactive software, QUILL, provides activities that encompass the prewriting/planning, composing/drafting, revising/editing, and publishing components of the writing process. Another type of communicative environment can be created by electronic mail systems in which children must attend to their audience by sending messages to peers and adults. Revisions of messages occur with the help of a child-oriented text editor. Parent-child dialogue, integrated spoken and written language experiences at school, and the inclusion of interactive microcomputer activities within the classroom all contribute to the creation of meaningful communicative contexts. (HOD)