To understand how children in whole language kindergartens develop as writers and readers, seven kindergarten teacher/researchers and a university teacher/researcher studied 183 children in the Manhattan-Ogden, Kansas, school district over one school year. Each quarter, teachers recorded all the writing behaviors they had observed in their students. At the beginning and end of the year, they assessed students' ability to recognize letters, sounds, and words, and their ability to read connected text. Results indicated that when children are encouraged to invent texts, they grow as writers, regardless of the reading and writing behaviors they bring to school. Patterns of growth were quite individual and often consisted of the addition of new writing behaviors rather than the abandonment of old behaviors. (Four tables of data are included; 22 references and three appendixes containing teacher questionnaires are attached.) (SR)