Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices

Writing is a critical emergent literacy skill that lays the foundation for children’s later literacy skills and reading achievement. Recent work indicates that many early childhood programs offer children materials and tools for engaging in writing activities but teachers rarely are seen modeling writing for children or scaffolding children’s writing attempts. Early childhood educational settings hoping to support children’s literacy development should provide multiple opportunities for children to observe teachers model writing, provide teacher support and scaffolding for children’s writing attempts and engage children in meaningful writing in their play. This paper provides twelve research-based guidelines for supporting children’s writing development in early childhood classrooms.