This study examined the preschool predictors of elementary school narrative writing skills. The sample included 65 typically developing African American children, ranging in age from 5.0 to 5.5 years, and was 44.6% male. Targeted preschool predictors included measures of phonological processing, core language abilities, prereading skills, and…

Describes children's process of constructing their own knowledge by going through one level after another of being "wrong" and relates this process to reading. Describes six strategies children invent and discusses implications for teaching. (AS)

Offers teachers and parents practical suggestions for helping children to begin reading naturally. Looks at specific strategies for helping young children to learn to read, particularly a built-in success procedure emphasizing nonvisual aspects of reading. (RWB)

The product of a two-year study investigating the literacy behavior of nine kindergarten students and their classmates, this report first explains the impetus and the theoretical foundations for the investigation and describes its subjects and setting. It then presents the methodology and the data collected from several related studies: (1)…

The concept of scaffolding can be used as a framework to argue that a "rich interpretation" in child language is needed in the area of early literacy learning. Child language is the reading-like text language of "prereading" kindergarten children. Two threads (internal and external) of the scaffolding process have been identified. The external…

This report gives a history of the 1979-80 segment of a continuing project that is designed to provide a theoretically based description of children's transition from prereading to reading, along with tools that teachers may use to assess children's emerging literacy abilities. The first chapter provides an introduction to the project, while the…