The Beginnings of Writing

Teachers with a sincere desire to understand each young child’s present challenges and successes as he or she develops competence in writing—and to then be able to offer appropriate instruction and support at each point in the child’s learning—can turn to this highly popular, well-respected book for practical, clear guidance. In it educators get a detailed story of children’s development of writing, from scribbles to letters; from imaginative inventions to conventional spelling; and from enthusiastic and boisterous utterances on paper to effectively structured compositions. This new edition of the book that broke new ground when the First Edition was published over 30 years ago remains the clearest, most comprehensive explanation of children’s development of writing available, now thoroughly updated and improved to include:

• NEW A detailed, lively discussion of the story of the English writing system
• NEW An overview of the development of story writing and the writing of basic exposition
• NEW The history of English spelling and a background in linguistics
• NEW An historical perspective on how we’ve come to teach writing the way we do
• NEW The tools and language needed to make observations about students’ work
• NEW A clear explanation of how speech sounds are made
• NEW Pointers for teaching English language learners