Interactive writing is a powerful instructional strategy in which the teacher and children "share the pen" to construct a collaboratively composed text. Traditionally, articles have been written detailing how the procedure can be implemented in grades kindergarten through two. We contend that interactive writing can also be an effective…

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…

Writing gives children a way to share their voices and ideas with the world. Even in early childhood, the purpose of writing is to communicate. All young children have messages to share, and writing is one tool they can use to communicate those messages. For young children, it is quite challenging to form and remember messages while also figuring…

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.

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…

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…

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…

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the current literature regarding beginning writers, with a particular focus on the cognitive and neuropsychological research that has implications for the translation process during writing. This overview will highlight specific theories with direct relevance to translation during writing, as well as…

Many students struggle with writing, which impacts their school and lifelong success, but early identification and intervention can help prevent long-term writing problems. Reliable and valid assessment tools are needed for early identification of struggling writers, as well as to monitor their progress and evaluate the effects of early…

Much has been made by early childhood educators about the importance of activities that foster early reading--and deservedly so--but studies show that reading and writing are skills that children develop simultaneously. Early reading is supported and improved by early writing. Young children need reading to help them learn about writing, and they…

In 2003, the National Commission on Writing pleaded for a writing revolution in education. The plea included a call for increased attention on the subject of writing, considered the "most neglected" of the "three "Rs"". Although state tests dictate that schools take an intensive look at the writing of 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-grade students, studying…

The author spent four years embedded in a multilingual kindergarten classroom in which children spoke six different languages and several more years observing multilingual Head Start classrooms. She shares numerous examples of young dual language learners actively figuring out the way written language works in their first and second languages.…

For many children, the beginnings of literacy appear in activities such as pretend play, drawing, conversations about signs in their environment, and writing. In this article, the author describes children's experiences and how they express themselves through writing. With the efforts to communicate, children will write their own stories, try to…