A practical guide to establish an early writing program begins in kindergarten with children dictating a story that a teacher or parent volunteer records on paper. In first grade, 30 minutes are set aside for writing. Additional ways are suggested to infuse writing activities into every subject in a child's schooling. (MLF)

Proposes a variant of the language experience approach in which teachers provide simple models of repetitive sentences about an interesting object. (FL)

Compares and describes written language environments of kindergarten children in Scandinavia, Great Britain, and the United States. Finds a lack of written language in Scandinavian kindergartens, writing in the context of interactive play in Great Britain, and either academic writing instruction or developmentally appropriate print-rich…

Concludes that in classes where their writings are turned into books, even seven year olds gain a sense of audience and begin to write with their readers in mind. (FL)

Traces the development of a project that consisted of first graders developing a book. (DF)

Discusses efforts at teaching children in kindergarten how to write, indicating that emergent readers can indeed write with scribbles, random letters, numerals, and sometimes words. Discusses their dictation, journal content, writing stages, and developmental trends. (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)

Lists 12 parallel skills in drawing and writing, including the fact that drawing can reproduce aesthetic forms while writing can copy letters and letter groups. (DF)

Describes how kindergarten children use invented spelling to rewrite Mother Goose nursery rhymes, indicating the phoneme grapheme system the children perceived from spoken language. (HTH)

Reports on a recent study of first grade writing efforts that confirms the importance of scribble in the writing process when it is an accepted language behavior in the classroom. (FL)

Reports on the work being done by Martha King with the writing of primary grade children. (FL)

Observes that children are ready to write when they understand what writing does, when they are interested in writing, when they want to communicate through writing, and when they understand that written symbols represent meaning. (RL)

Offers guidelines on helping young children develop into independent writers. Explains what to expect at different stages, such as semiphonetic and phonetic stages, drawing as a prewriting activity, and writing and revising once drawing no longer dictates writing. Offers suggestions for providing an environment that supports the writing process.…

Reviews literature comparing traditional manuscript alphabets to slanted manuscript alphabets and finds insufficient evidence to support requiring kindergarten, first-, and second-grade children to learn the slanted manuscript alphabet. Notes that since many children enter school knowing how to form their letters in the traditional style, learning…

Using student dictated stories to create class books is an exciting way to teach young children about books and writing. Children can thus use their own material as they learn to read, the books provide a class library, and writing through dictation allows young children to learn about reading and writing before they can read or write--even with…