Suggests three ways to foster writing skills in preschool and primary school children: encourage language development; set up a writing center; and teach children to have fun with words. Offers instructions for writing projects, including making picture dictionaries, talking with pictures, writing outdoors, composing silly sentences, keeping…

Extracted from a doctoral thesis on young children's emergent literacy, this paper describes the literacy development of one five-year-old subject. The paper first describes the subject's home environment, her relationships with family members, and her early reading experience and literacy development. Transcripts illustrating her home reading…

The validity of recent research concerning invented spelling, the developmental stages in children's writing, and whether children will attempt writing before reading and continue writing while learning to read were examined. Five developmental stages in spelling have been identified: (1) the precommunicative stage, involving the use of random…

A longitudinal study examined the development over the primary school years of the writing skills of children from the time they entered first grade until they completed grade three. In order to identify the nature of the literacy-related home experience of these children, interviews were conducted with each child (three classes in all) as he or…

Written by teachers for teachers of elementary school students, the 20 articles in this collection are designed to provide insights into the way children learn to write and to encourage teachers to examine their own theories and perceptions of writing and writing instruction. The articles are grouped in five sections. In the first section, six…

This book is designed to provide elementary school teachers with information, suggestions, and models for using writing in the social studies, from early primary to middle grades. There are four major chapters to the book. Chapter I is titled "Research on the Teaching of Writing." The articles in this first section move from a survey of research…

Describes a program that associates phonics instruction with children's earliest reading and writing, using the ERIS method to teach sound/letter correspondences and to provide opportunities for writing and reading. (NKA)

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)

Reports on two case studies of writing development in the primary grades. Notes the impact of teacher's questioning techniques, both on student development as writers and on teacher ability to evaluate student progress. (RL)

Discusses children's writing process and how creating an atmosphere in which they are willing to take risks encourages their writing fluency and enthusiasm. Suggests that allowing invented spellings, reading-writing partners (peer pairs), and class editing can be beneficial to beginning writers. (HTH)

Examines the effect of simplified reading materials on writing skills of 10-year-old English-as-a-Second-Language students in England. Finds no increase in students' expressive resources but does find a consolidating effect on command of the language system. Relates results to Krashen's model of second language acquisition. (RS)

A study of kindergarten children used three language-eliciting situations to obtain stories. The stories were compared for fluency, vocabulary, descriptive nature, and story structure. Results indicated that stories elicited without the use of a prop were more fluent and reflected a more sophisticated story structure than those elicited by a…

Describes a study that compared drawing and discussion as planning activities for writing, to determine the effects of each upon the quality of narrative writing. Reports that, among second and third grade students, the writing quality of the drawing group was significantly higher. (KM)

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…