California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

oth of which lead to increased exposure,
experience, and engagement with
text. This engagement with text has a
positive effect on overall reading ability
(Bus 2001; Whitehurst and Lonigan
1998). The opposite is also true: negative
attitudes toward reading, especially
recreational reading, usually lead
to decreased exposure to reading and
reading ability (McKenna, Kear, and
Ellsworth 1995).
In addition to increasing children’s
exposure to reading and print and
their interest in literacy, early reading
activities also help children learn
about the context of literacy and the
structure of literacy activities (Crain-
Thoreson and Dale 1992), providing
children with the language used at
school for literacy activities (Heath
1982; Wells 1985b). Helping children
become familiar with some aspects of
the language (Heath 1982), participant
structures (Phillips 1983), and patterns
of interaction (Cazden 1986) of
the classroom during the preschool
years will place them in the right trajectory
to be successful learners in
school (Improving Schooling for Language-Minority
Children: A Research
Agenda 1997). Consequently, the foundations
focus on children’s engagement
in literacy activities in a way
that will furnish them with knowledge
about the roles and routines of reading
and literacy activities they are likely to
experience when they enter school.
Writing
Writing Strategies. Learning to
write involves cognitive, social, and
physical development. From a very
young age, children notice the writing
in their surroundings. They begin to
develop the understanding that regular
California Department of Education • Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1
signs can be used to represent ideas or
concepts. At first, they may conclude
that there should be some resemblance
between what is being represented
and the way it is represented.
For example, they may say that train
must be a very long word, while
mosquito must be a very small one
(Ferreiro and Teberosky 1982; Piaget
1962). At the same time, they begin to
differentiate between writing and other
kinds of visual representation (e.g.,
drawing) (Bissex 1980; Ferreiro and
Teberosky 1982; Harste, Woodward,
and Burke 1984). They accompany
this realization with a differentiation
between the tools for writing and those
for drawing (“I need to get a pencil to
write my name”). Moreover, their writing
starts to look different from their
drawing (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1982;
Harste, Woodward, and Burke 1984),
often being linear in form instead of
circular.
As young children get more involved
with written text by being read to,
examining books, and observing
others write, they begin to experiment
with writing. Children’s emergent
writing abilities are demonstrated in
the preschool classroom with such
activities as pretending to write and
learning to write one’s name (Whitehurst
and Lonigan 2001). According
to some theorists, children’s writing
follows a developmental path. Initially,
children demonstrate a global form of
writing. They tend to treat writing from
a pictographic perspective, which is
usually demonstrated by using drawings
as writing or using idiosyncratic
scribble (e.g., markings that have
meaning only for the child). Later,
children use letter-like forms to write,
usually making marks that resemble
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LANGUAGE AND LITERACY