Taking a languaging perspective, this paper considers how kindergarten students and their teacher are relationally and intellectually responsive to one another in authoring conversations by constructing a sense of copresence. Copresence is defined by Goffman (1966) as being "uniquely accessible, available, and subject to one another" (p.…

The purpose of this observational study was to examine the amount and type of writing instruction and practice in kindergarten classrooms. Participants included 78 kindergarten teachers from 34 elementary schools across three states in the US. Classroom teachers were videotaped three times (fall, winter, and spring) during the academic year. We…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the direct and indirect relations between short-term memory (STM), reading, oral language, and writing at the letter, word, and discourse levels in young, developing writers both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Method: Participants were 449 English-speaking kindergarten students (52% female)…

As a literacy educator, the author's interest in how students conceptualize writing is one that she devotes a significant amount of time and interest. Understanding how students make sense of reading and writing at an early age can assist educators in designing and implementing literacy engagements that are both high quality and effective. To…

This article seeks to empower teachers to create a literacy environment in which children begin to identify as writers: confident, willing to take risks, engaged, excited, persistent, resilient, resourceful, and self-starting. The teaching methods provided in the article are centered around the writer's workshop model, applied in a Kindergarten…

Writing is a critical literacy skill that emerges in kindergarten. The research literature has only addressed transcription skills of kindergarteners and has failed to address text generation. The purpose of this action-research study was to investigate the effect of oral language instruction that focused on narrative text structures on…

Orthographic knowledge is information about the writing system stored in memory that children draw upon to read and write. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the ways in which kindergarten teachers use verbal scaffolds to support children's development of orthographic knowledge during writing instruction. This case study of four…

A common practice in today's primary-grade classrooms, teacher-student writing conferences are considered a vital component of instruction by accomplished writing teachers and advocates of process writing. Moreover, what teachers say and how they say it shapes those opportunities for student learning that are possible in classrooms. As such,…

Argumentation is challenging for young learners. We used design research to develop an intervention that was based on principles of dialogic argumentation and strategy instruction and used genre elements to guide planning and evaluation for revision. Instruction included oral discussion of children's books, written responses to reading, and the…

A substantial body of research has demonstrated the efficacy of early writing interventions that target skills and composing processes; however, much less is known about the effectiveness of classroom writing instruction outside of the context of an intervention. The goal of this study was to investigate if writing instruction and student practice…

This full-year experimental study examined how methods of writing instruction contribute to kindergarten students' acquisition of foundational and compositional early writing skills. Multiple regression with cluster analysis was used to compare 3 writing instructional groups: an interactive writing group, a writing workshop group, and a…

This three-year qualitative study examined how district personnel interpreted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts for bilingual teachers' Spanish literacy instruction and the changes that four dual-language (DL) teachers (K-2) made in their Spanish literacy instruction in response to their participation in professional…

In the present study, we examined the influence of kindergarten component skills on writing outcomes, both concurrently and longitudinally to first grade. Using data from 265 students, we investigated a model of writing development including attention regulation along with students' reading, spelling, handwriting fluency, and oral language…

In the present study, we examined the influence of kindergarten component skills on writing outcomes, both concurrently and longitudinally to first grade. Using data from 265 students, we investigated a model of writing development including attention regulation along with students' reading, spelling, handwriting fluency, and oral language…

This qualitative study was conducted in the context of a preservice teacher education program with a focus on early literacy. The study focused on the insights preservice teachers gained from working closely beside one emergent writer. The authors report on six focus cases and identify five cross-case themes--describing preservice teachers who (a)…