Critical lessons that share a transactional view of early literacy development are synthesized. A transactional view of reading and writing means that literacy as a meaning construction process, and that within a given literacy event, both the text and the reader are changed.

The progress, development, and evaluation of the Writing to Read computer program developed by John Henry Martin are detailed in the three sections of this paper. Describing the program as a writing-to-read system that relies initially on children's phonetic spelling--letting the sounds uttered be coded without attention to the inconsistencies of…

Stressing the importance of understanding child development, this paper first describes the writing of several children in a kindergarten class who represent various levels of emerging literacy. Based on the descriptions of classroom activities, the paper argues that with a developmental perspective the teacher can build instruction on what the…