This booklet is designed to help primary school teachers encourage and support children in learning to write during the first years of school. It discusses learning to write in the years before formal schooling, focusing on mediated contact with print, involvement in the everyday functions of print, experimentation with print, and support and encouragement for young writers. The booklet also examines some common steps in children's writing development, focusing on the role-play writing phase, experimental writing phase, and the early writing phase. It then addresses writing in the first years of school, focusing on recent research in the teaching of writing, genres of writing for young children, teaching strategies, writing in the first year at school, and support techniques for beginning writers. (MDM)