Examines the concept of "word" in beginning literacy, where children were assigned typical concepts of word tasks (copying from the board, writing from dictation, free writing) at the beginning and end of the year. Compares spelling scores with the concept of word measures. Finds a developmental hierarchy in concept of word acquisition…

Chronicles a research project that collected and examined first-grade children's writing over a year. Develops a system for classifying the children's genres that has two major groups: writing about actions/events; and writing about objects/things. Describes emergent genres of writing from the children, looking beyond spelling. Cites active roles…

Compares students' perceptions of themselves as readers and as writers. Finds that students in a traditionally academic classroom defined writing as handwriting, while students in the other classroom (which used an emergent literacy approach) saw themselves as authors despite the fact that some students were still in the early stages of writing.…

Studies variations in kindergarten children's early writing forms in Spanish and the relationship among different writing forms, phonological awareness and the demands of the writing tasks. Suggests that in the process of writing acquisition, children move back and forth across forms of writing. Notes interplay among different types and levels of…

Investigates the nature and role of predictable texts for beginning readers and writers in first grade. Examines ways three children used texts to support their early-literacy development. Finds diverse and complex activities, as children made links within a text (textuality), between texts (intertextuality), and between texts and contexts…

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)

No greater challenge currently faces the schools than articulating what a literacy curriculum for sociocultural diversity might look like. And yet the literature on young school children's composing has dealt only peripherally with this issue. In this theoretical essay, it is argued that, even for young children, the composing of both oral and…

A case study examined assumptions of current written language pedagogies, particularly the links between oral performance, literacy pedagogy, and the use of the explicit, analytic language valued in school. The subject, a young African-American child enrolled in an urban K/1 classroom, used school writing activities and the music of language to…

Noting that emergent literacy and technology are new educational fields that are just beginning to develop, a study explored the connection between emergent writing and technology by examining the effects on kindergarten children learning to write using a microcomputer. A group of kindergarten students attending North Star Elementary in Nikiski,…

A study examined the developmental nature of early literacy in relation to variations in task demands, general cognitive development, and socioeconomic background. Subjects (N=32) were placed in two groups of 16 suburban Chicago kindergarten students that were designated either low income group (LIG) or high income group (HIG). The subjects,…

Describes the writing and drawing produced by a group of first-grade students during "writing workshop" time throughout the school year. Considers whether genres emerge in ways analogous to other aspects of writing development. Suggests that genre may indeed be emergent. (HB)

Shows that children in the primary grades possessed considerable working knowledge of the cultural conventions of narrative genres but much less working knowledge of the cultural conventions of informational genres. Reveals grade-related developmental differences for some dimensions of linguistic and textual organization. Shows that cultural…

In order to describe the developmental patterns of writing and rereading from writing of kindergarten children across group and individual contexts, a study asked 123 kindergarten children in Palatine, Illinois, to write and reread stories of their own composition over a school year. Children were asked to write in group classroom conditions at…

Two series of case studies were carried out following a multiple baseline design across individuals. The first series of eight studies included 4- to 5-year-old Dutch kindergarten children, and the second series examined 5- to 6-year-old kindergarten children. Each child wrote approximately 16 stories in the natural classroom environment over a…

Investigates effectiveness of a first-grade formal spelling program (with explicit spelling instruction and weekly spelling tests). Shows that most children knew a majority of the spelling words before being given explicit instruction, and they transferred few of their spelling words to their journals. Notes the classroom reading/writing workshop…