This study examined the effects of receiving multiple intervention services on the language, literacy, and general development of preschool children from low-income families. By employing a hierarchical linear model on a sample of 1436 children, developmental outcomes of four-year-old children receiving varying numbers of intervention services…

Recounts an incident illustrating a child's development of communication skills and offers suggestions for parents to help facilitate that development. (HTH)

Notes that names are the first words most children write and that learning to write their name can be highly motivating for preschoolers. Addresses: why preschool children should be encouraged to write their names; organizing and facilitating the sign-in process at school; how children develop their ability to write their names; and the benefits…

Argues that James Moffett's influential model of a young writer's development is flawed, because it depicts beginning writers as being far more limited than they are. (HTH)

Explores the patterns in children's talk about their writing, by means of transcribed conversations during daily writing/sharing sessions in a first grade classroom. Discusses the importance of this kind of talk. (HTH)

Relates some of the observations made of a kindergarten classroom over a two-year period in which teachers simulated as many conditions as possible with respect to a natural "learning-how-to-write" situation. (HOD)

Notes that because reading and writing are separate but complementary aspects of a single language system, the way teachers plan activities determines the way in which children's writing helps them develop insights into their reading. (FL)

Explores how children become oriented to literacy and how their perceptions of the purpose of print develop as they move toward becoming more fluent users of print. (DF)

Presents a model that predicts writing growth in children as a logical outcome of language acquisition. Provides a list of the kinds of language learning underway in the elementary school years and suggests that teachers may use this list to anticipate where and how such learning will influence the writing processes of children. (FL)

Examines kindergarten children's use of talk during writing to draw inferences regarding how children use speech to make sense of written language. (HOD)

Disproves two assumptions about the development of written language by examining the spontaneous writing of a young child. Expounded primarily by James Britton and associates, the assumptions are (1) children's early writing is relatively undifferentiated in function, and (2) the primary starting point for young writers is writing stories. (HTH)

Argues that the process of learning to write should be recognized as a process of learning how to construct different kinds of written texts, each representing a different way of making meaning. (HOD)

Explores the consequences of not developing competence in oral forms of the second language, which is the intermediate step in the recommended sequence of bilingual literacy development. (JK)

Describes a six-step technique that capitalizes on children's experiences and interests while providing structure and redundancy within a creative framework to maximize sight word acquisition. (FL)

Describes some of the components of the West German approach to beginning reading and writing instruction. (FL)