This article provides early educators with guidance for promoting early writing development by integrating writing opportunities throughout the school day.

This article describes how preschool-age children can engage with recipes as a genre for reading, writing, and play. This formative/design study was conducted by a teacher researcher partnership in a linguistically and socioeconomically diverse public early learning center. Through home engagements, the research team identified cooking as a site…

Emergent bilingual children express their ideas in written language through meaningful marks on a page by leveraging their oral language and print focused skills from home and school languages. Because writing is a complex task, particularly for children learning more than one language, teachers must make decisions about how they guide children…

This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

Young children's engagement with digital tools (e.g., tablets, smartphones, ebooks/storyapps, and mobile apps) is increasing globally. This is inevitable in our digital world. Even though children primarily use digital technology for entertainment purposes, these tools offer valuable learning opportunities too. Importantly, adults can provide and…

The purpose of this article is to describe the development of writing in young dual language learners, who are children under 5 years old who are learning the dominant language and another language at the same time. Early writing has been associated with literacy outcomes in the later years of elementary school. The article presents samples of…

This teaching tip highlights three writing minilessons that help students construct vivid sensory detail (textual detail related to the five senses) in their fiction and creative nonfiction writing. Learning to show, not tell, is a difficult task for novice writers. The author explores reasons why this is the case and provides directions for the…

See, Say, Write is an adaptable classroom writing routine that teachers can use across a range of activities in the preschool classroom. This preschool writing routine offers an opportunity for teachers to build on a shared experience through engagement in rich conversation and writing. After a shared experience, teachers will provide a visual…

Print in the environment is typically posted in early childhood classrooms. However, the print that exists is often not meaningful to children, and teachers rarely engage children in using the print. This is a missed opportunity to support children's writing. This article presents research-based ideas for engaging children with meaningful print in…

Early writing is important to young children's development--research indicates that writing is predictive of later reading and writing. Despite this, preschool teachers often do not focus on writing and offer limited scaffolding to foster children's writing development. This article shares innovative ways to scaffold early writing across the three…

This paper examines, from the perspective of mediated action (Wertsch, 1991, 1998), the ways in which an experienced, primary-grade teacher used and continually modified an instructional too--"the practice page"--to mediate specific aspects of interactive writing, an approach to beginning writing instruction. The authors provide a detailed,…

Discusses the developmental writing behaviors of children in a print rich environment. Suggests ways to encourage the writing process in beginning writers, and urges teachers to learn more about the concept of invented spelling. (MM)

Offers some suggestions for articulating curricular objectives and activities based on the theoretical principles underlying emergent literacy. Suggests readings for extending and strengthening the knowledge and understanding needed to foster young children's language and literacy. (MG)

Describes how sharing students' writing in small groups is a good alternative to sharing writing with the whole class. Provides "Author's Circle" guidelines to clarify group procedures. (MM)

Describes and evaluates the Test of Early Written Language (TEWL), an instrument resulting in percentile or standard scores that reflect children's writing development at ages three to seven. Warns that it fails to tap important concepts at the lower age ranges, and violates several principles of children's authentic writing experiences. (MM)