Process writing research began with adult writers, eventually expanding to include school age children and more recently, emergent writers. Research at the early childhood level has often been directed at specific aspects of writing development rather than an examination of process writing development. This study used pre-existing writing samples to examine writing development in kindergarten and first grade over the course of the school year following the district-wide implementation of a writing process based intervention. The intervention utilized a writing workshop approach to teach the writing process with the addition of two elements: picture plans were used to support emergent writers’ prewriting plans, and teachers focused on a single teaching point to target writing instruction. Beginning and end of year samples from 138 kindergarten and 106 first-grade students from three elementary schools in a medium-sized, public school district in the southwestern United States were used for this study, yielding a total of 488 samples. The samples were scored to investigate the change over time on four outcome measures: quantity of words produced, attributes of prewriting picture plan, evelopmental level, and handwriting. In addition, the impact of fidelity to the intervention features was explored in relation to the four outcome measures. Fidelity to implementation was scored on each of the 10 separate aspects of the intervention: student choice for topics, reading-writing connections, prewriting, peer conferencing, teacher conferences, minilessons, revision, editing, publishing, and modeling. Overall, the study found that the greatest change over time in kindergarten and first grade was in the developmental level. There were also large effects for quantity of words produced and handwriting. A regression analysis was conducted to determine which aspects of the intervention feature were most critical to early writing development. Student choice had a significant positive association with all four dependent measures. Minilessons had a significant association with developmental level and handwriting; other significant positive associations included revision with quantity of words produced, and editing with planning. The findings suggest these features of writing workshops should be included in interventions designed to foster early writing development.

Early writing ability for young children is essential for later literacy and academic achievement. Early writing, especially composing, with young children offers rich opportunities to foster both emergent literacy and language skills simultaneously, which may help boost overall growth for children in poverty. This study examines early writing supports of teachers in prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms within an early writing framework that includes language, as well as literacy, supports during early writing instruction. Fifteen teachers’ writing instruction was examined during two instructional contexts: morning message and small-group in the fall of the school year. Results suggest that, in general, teachers used morning message to reinforce emergent literacy skills related to the alphabetic principle and concepts of print. Teachers’ language (i.e., translation) supports during writing were sparse. However, during small group writing activities, teachers’ supported child language related to pragmatics/discourse at higher rates, specifically, guiding children’s attention to topic. Additionally, a unique relation emerged between teachers embedding language supports within writing instruction to their overall global classroom quality. Results suggest that composing with young children may be an optimal context to support child language growth. Few teacher background or control factors were systematically linked to quality writing in the classroom; however, teachers who spoke using more complex syntax also used more abstract writing supports (i.e., explaining and connection), suggesting linguistic features may be connected to teacher approach during instruction. Implications for professional development are discussed. / Literacy & Learners

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Denna systematiska litteraturstudie syftar till att undersöka vad tidigare forskning kommit fram till vad gäller undervisningsmaterial, undervisningsmetoder och samtalsaktiviteter som främjar flerspråkiga elevers tidiga skrivutveckling. Studiens material innehåller 13 olika publikationer som kvalitativt analyserats med hjälp av ett kategoriseringsschema för att kunna besvara studiens syfte och frågeställningar. Publikationerna söktes fram i olika databaser, ERIC, Libris och Diva, där vi använde oss av utvalda sökord för att få fram relevanta studier för valt forskningsområde. Resultatet visar att flerspråkiga elevers skrivutveckling främjas främst genom att undervisningen är explicit och består av konkret, anpassat och varierat material. Många forskare lyfter vikten av vilka didaktiska val lärare väljer att använda sig av. Litteraturstudien visar att flerspråkiga elever aktivt ska delta i den ordinarie klassrumsundervisningen så mycket som möjligt, och att olika typer av samtalsaktiviteter i klassrummet gynnar flerspråkiga elevers skrivutveckling. Slutligen visar resultatet att det finns brist på forskning om undervisningsmaterial och undervisningsmetoder som lämpar sig i undervisningen.

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