Citation/Abstract

Early writing has been found to be related to letter-word knowledge in preschool and predictive of children's academic success in primary grades. Results from two studies examining preschool children's writing development and preschool teachers' instructional supports for writing are reported. The results indicate that writing in preschool is significantly related to letter-word knowledge in preschool and kindergarten, and to handwriting in kindergarten. Preschool teachers attend to the relations among early literacy skills, and support children's writing development with implicit and explicit methods. Some of the methods are similar to methods of handwriting instruction, but they do not equate such methods with handwriting instruction.