Discusses first grade students' writing experiences and processes. Demonstrates, using student writing samples, how simple expression can lead to greater complexity with appropriate teacher guidance. Asserts that teachers must observe and take cues from students to determine what learning context and hints to provide. (MM)

Examines how Hispanic bilingual kindergartners and first graders create and express personal meanings by illustrating parts of stories read aloud in class, dictating responses, and writing original narratives. Notes that literacy activities should be tied authentically to questions and interests expressed by children in the classroom. (MM)

Describes a successful literacy project involving the teacher, parents, and children in one kindergarten class in a small rural community in New South Wales, Australia. Discusses the classroom setting, teacher's approaches and reading style, introduction of a "writing center," parent involvement, role of the school library and librarian,…

Noting that children's perceptions of literacy and of themselves as learners differ from those of adults, this book documents how Sarah, from the ages of 2 to 5 years, understood literacy and invented reading and writing for herself. Numerous reading and writing samples in the book, organized around broad research questions, present Sarah as an…

Noting that more and more teachers are persuaded by the wisdom of teaching reading and writing together and keeping an emphasis on understanding children's early literacy learning, this third edition refines the presentation of two earlier editions to make it more useful for teachers who are setting up and teaching emergent literacy programs. The…

Designed to expand children's artistic and reading/writing abilities while developing their ability to draw, tell, and write stories, this paper describes a "story-picture" program for first grade Blackfoot Indian children. General cognitive, perceptual and psychomotor, and affective skills are listed as the course's intended learning…

This booklet presents specific suggestions, based on research, to help parents encourage their children to become readers. Suggestions for reading to children include: (1) continuing to read to children once they learn to read; (2) reading to children regularly; (3) talking about what is read; (4) sharing reading; (5) starting slowly; and (6)…

Examined written language tasks in 120 Gujarati-speaking children from grades two through four to assess the development of such skills in a syllabo-alphabetic writing system. Results indicated that the syllabo-alphabetic system of Devanagari proved to follow the models of reading acquisition constructed for alphabetic systems. (MM)

Reviews Monsters and Make-Believe Plus, a computer program which supports learners in their quest to become skilled language users. Finds it to be one of the most powerful software programs available to implement a whole language program. (MG)

Public policy in France concerning the articulation of preschool education and primary education, particularly in the area of writing readiness and writing instruction, is discussed. A 1989 law expected to define, for the first time, the expected competencies at each educational level, was met with disappointment by early elementary school…

A study was conducted in which word processing and voice synthesis were used to teach beginning writing skills to kindergarten and first grade students. Subjects, 46 children from two elementary schools enrolled in an early education summer school class in writing, were randomly divided into three groups. One group was taught writing using a…

Children in modern literate cultures often begin learning to write and read before they begin school, and continue to use written language, and to develop writing and reading abilities, in nonschool settings even as they attend school. It is often the case as well that the writing and reading demands of school differ from those of nonschool…

A study investigated the writing behavior of young children in a home setting by collecting and analyzing writing samples of three children--Avaleigh, Adam, and Heather (aged four, five, and six years)--and interviewing them about the features, content, reasons, form, and other details of writing done at home. Parents kept a journal detailing…

To see what effects practice--frequent writing without teacher correction--would have on the writing of students in grades one and two in one small elementary school, writing samples were collected from all pupils at each grade level in October and May. Five factors were examined: general impression, length, vocabulary, spelling, and syntactic…

Describes a plan for improving students' writing skills which was developed in a school for kindergarten through third grade students, and which incorporated parent participation and "publication" of student writing. (JC)