Describes techniques for employing sentence combining to improve the beginning writing skills of elementary school students. (DD)

Discusses children's interest in names, and the importance of this interest for their developing literacy. (MM)

Much research has been done in the area of storytelling with young children. Storytelling, as the author speaks of it, means a specific time set aside for the oral composing of texts. For the tellers, it is a chance to think through, discover, plan, and develop the story that they may, eventually, decide to write, alongside a supportive teacher…

Describes a rationale and activities for using journals in the preschool setting to bring the school and home environments together and to acquaint children with the writing process. (HTH)

Examines collaborative writing and the importance of children's talk as they write. Provides several examples of children's dialogues during collaborative writing and role-playing sessions. (MM)

Examines children's story-writing processes as they develop over a two-year period, from kindergarten through second grade. Observes that children reflect multiple worlds in their writing, including their ongoing social world, the imaginary world of their story, and the wider, experienced world of people, places, and events. (MM)

Discusses observations of children's efforts to move from spoken language to written language and the acquisition of cohesion in first and second grade students. (HTH)

Examines the writing of a four-year-old child in response to literature. Discusses the child's uses for writing and the concepts and principles of early writing. Demonstrates the child's engagement with children's books. (RS)

Argues that literacy teachers should take letter play seriously in conjunction with invented spelling to help their students learn how letters and sounds relate. (RS)

Describes the development of a beginning writing assessment and defines the criteria used for evaluation. Provides a checklist of evaluation criteria, divided according to three developmental stages: beginning writing or readiness, transition, and composition. (AEA)

Follows the reading and writing development of a young boy from first through third grade. Shares how, through storytelling, he defined a sense of himself that retained a strong connection to his primary-years personality while reaching out confidently toward the world of upper elementary classrooms that he would now be facing. (MG)

Explores the transition of several children from spoken language to beginning writing. (HTH)

Argues the importance of dictated stories, with the teacher or other adult as scribe, in children's development as writers. Examines one child's literary influences and her literacy development. (MG)

Reports a case study which reveals that children use the knowledge they hold about what writing is for, how writing is created, and the conventions of writing in their first language to help them write successfully in the second language. (MM)