What kind of grammar is used in this sentence?
In school, while actively interacting with other students, children actually are practicing how to communicate with others.
Particularly my question is about children that is used in the middle of the sentence as a subject. If I'm going to say something like that, I'd say:
In school, children are actively interacting with other students while practicing how to communicate with others.
What you have here is an introductory clause. Parenthetical phrases can often be placed differently in a sentence, as free modifiers.
Your main clause is essentially this:
Children are practising how to communicate with others.
But your example is specifically about children (i) in school, and (ii) when they interact with other children, and this information is included to further define both the subject and the conditions under which the statement is true.
You could keep the subject first and add this information in other ways:
Children in school are practising how to communicate with others while actively interacting with other students.
Different placing of defining details is very common and often has no effect on the meaning:
-We are going to the zoo today.
-Today, we are going to the zoo.
However, in your specific example, the way it is rendered seems best. 'While' can mean both "during", and "at the same time as". Rendered as it is, it comes across that the learning is a result of the interaction, whereas the alternate way I rendered it sounds more like two things happening at the same time.
