Background: With standardization ever squeezing creative curricula in K-1 classrooms, creating time for a play-based multimodal writing curriculum that leverages children's strengths as storytellers is revolutionary. Due in part to accountability policy pressures, print-based writing and verbocentric writing feedback are still often privileged in…

This convergent parallel mixed methods exploratory study used qualitative and quantitative data collected simultaneously, analyzed separately, and merged for an overarching interpretation. Kindergarten students (n = 27) were randomly assigned to either a control condition of Writer's Workshop or an experimental condition that featured…

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.

While research demonstrates the important role parents play in facilitating children's literacy development, little is known about the knowledge that underpins these exchanges. Here, we examined the association between parents' reading-related knowledge (phonological awareness, knowledge of syllable patterns, and identification of regular and…

Tested and fine-tuned in K-2 classrooms, this book provides engaging lessons and materials for teaching the three genres of writing--opinion, procedural, and story--that provide a foundation for beginning writers' persuasive, informative, and narrative writing skills. The authors' approach integrates strategy instruction, self-regulated learning,…

Despite the rising number of linguistically diverse students in countries where English is the primary medium of instruction in schools, there is a relative lack of research on how these students learn to write in English and respond to common classroom literacy practices. One practice found in early childhood classrooms is literacy-enriched play,…

The primary focus of this study was to determine the feasibility of teacher implementation of peer-assisted writing strategies (PAWS) in improving the writing outcomes of kindergarten children. Six classrooms were recruited, and 3 were randomly assigned to the experimental condition. Results indicated that the content, length, and formatting of…

Research to guide text structure interventions for the primary grades is very limited, yet as early as in kindergarten, many state standards increasingly emphasize exposure to challenging expository texts. The purpose of the present study was to provide preliminary evidence of the feasibility and promise (or the effects) of three brief text…

Despite the poor outcomes for U.S. students on national writing tests, overall research on how to teach writing is sparse, and this scarcity is more pronounced in the early years of beginning to write. In this study 81,200 we present preliminary findings from Year 1 of a 3-year Institute of Education Sciences-funded Goal 2 project aimed at…

Despite the poor outcomes for U.S. students on national writing tests, overall research on how to teach writing is sparse, and this scarcity is more pronounced in the early years of beginning to write. In this study 81,200 we present preliminary findings from Year 1 of a 3-year Institute of Education Sciences-funded Goal 2 project aimed at…

The primary focus of this study was to determine the feasibility of teacher implementation of peer-assisted writing strategies (PAWS) in improving the writing outcomes of kindergarten children. Six classrooms were recruited, and 3 were randomly assigned to the experimental condition. Results indicated that the content, length, and formatting of…

Reading and writing are increasingly performed with digital, screen-based technologies rather than with analogue technologies such as paper and pen(cil). The current digitization is an occasion to "unpack," theoretically and conceptually, what is entailed in reading and writing as embodied, multisensory processes involving audiovisual…