Presents examples to substantiate the observation that children experiment with and benefit from writing long before they receive formal instruction, and suggests ways for parents and teachers to avoid obstructing this natural and healthy tendency. (HTH)

The nature of meaning as it is developed through interaction between individuals is explored in a discussion of how writers lead readers to understand a text. (DF)

Describes a study which explored developmental changes in preschoolers' knowledge of the writing system. The children were asked to write four utterances without knowing the purpose of the request and without additional explanations. The purpose was to determine how early children's graphic responses in decontextualized situations have features of…

Discusses efforts at teaching children in kindergarten how to write, indicating that emergent readers can indeed write with scribbles, random letters, numerals, and sometimes words. Discusses their dictation, journal content, writing stages, and developmental trends. (HTH)

Offers an interpretive frame for viewing children's growth as creators of imaginative worlds. Suggests that writing development depends not only on children's discovery of cognitive and linguistic strategies but on children's discovery that writing can help authors create coherence in their worlds beyond texts. (MS)

Explores the patterns in children's talk about their writing, by means of transcribed conversations during daily writing/sharing sessions in a first grade classroom. Discusses the importance of this kind of talk. (HTH)

Reports on a recent study of first grade writing efforts that confirms the importance of scribble in the writing process when it is an accepted language behavior in the classroom. (FL)

Claims that the term "process writing" is used indiscriminately to describe both the naturalistic approach to learning how to write and the process of selecting a topic, drafting, conferencing, and publishing. Suggests that writing to publish should not be the only writing children do. (SRT)

Explores (from the point of view of the writer, a children's author) one aspect of learning about language that is present in the picture books he writes: the relation between sound and sense. (SR)

Examines the meanings young children express in talk, pictures, and written text, focusing on the integration of the three. Findings illustrate children's exploration of imagined worlds through drawing and talk and the potential problems children face in transferring those worlds to text. (SRT)

Describes a two-day residence in a fifth- and sixth-grade classroom of poet Arnold Adoff. Presents his interaction with five students as they struggle with their poetry writing. (HTH)

Describes the interrelationship of reading and writing and proposes a full-school program for reading and writing development that builds on the full range of personal use of written language. (JL)

Describes the growing autonomy of three young siblings as they wrote in the poetic function over a five-year period. Includes samples of the children's poetry. (HTH)

Highlights children as a source of information about curriculum development. Observes how and why some first grade children write, and how this may affect teachers' instructional assumptions. (HTH)

Discusses what a spontaneously formed group of three children thought and did as they composed a story together. The observations focus on the whole writing process. (HTH)