The literacy development of kindergarten English-language learners.

This yearlong qualitative study explored how a literature-based literacy curriculum supported the literacy growth of ESL kindergartners participating in a full-day Portuguese-English bilingual program. The investigation centered on describing the interrelationships between oral language, reading, and writing development, and on tracing the children's literacy development in the context of instruction received. Literacy learning was embedded in three focal literacy events: circle/reading, journal writing, and phonics/handwriting. Findings indicate that an emphasis on phonics and on constructing meaning from texts supported the children's construction of literacy understandings. In addition, the findings support the notion that limited oral language proficiency does not constrain children's emergent writing and reading development. Children were capable of exploring sound-letter correspondences and building knowledge of high-frequency words. Exposure to word learning through contextualized and holisti c experiences with literature and minimal direct instruction in invented spelling led children to construct sophisticated understandings about the functions and features of written language.

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Researchers agree that there is a pressing need to understand how language-minority children emerge to literacy in a second language (Fitzgerald, 1995). However, emergent literacy investigations have dealt primarily with native speakers of English emerging to literacy in a white, middle-class environment and with children learning to read and write in Spanish (Bissex, 1980; Flares, 1991; Schieffelin & Cochran-Smith, 1984; Teale & Sulzby, 1986). Similarly, there has been insufficient research relating the process of second language acquisition to the classroom settings for learning English--such as the nature of instruction provided and the use of written versus oral modes of English input (August & Hakuta, 1997).

However, some investigations suggest that young ESL children are capable of making sense of written input while they are working on becoming fluent speakers of English (Fitzgerald & Noblit, 1999; Weber & Longhi-Chirlin, 1996). This research orientation maintains that just as speaking, reading, and writing are interrelated in the emerging literacy of native speakers, they are equally related in the emerging literacy of second-language children. A literature-based curriculum, in particular, may capitalize on this relationship as it encourages children to talk about the stories they hear and to write their own stories (Bates, 1995; Lindfords, 1989). Classroom contexts that include a writing center where children take control of their writing seem to encourage ESL children to experiment with emergent forms of writing (Han & Ernst-Slavit, 1999; Huss, 1995; Peter, 1994). First-grade English learners, in particular, may attain a level of reading and writing development similar to that of native English speakers when classroom practices support meaningful engagements with print and teacher-led scaffolds to help children figure out soundsymbol correspondences (Fitzgerald & Noblit, 1999).

These investigations with early childhood ESL learners have important implications. First, they support the notion that in the earliest stages, reading and writing development may outpace children's oral development in their second language (Anderson & Roit, 1996; Gersten, 1996). Second, they contribute to a mounting body of research suggesting that native language reading development is not a prerequisite for learning to read in a new language (Fitzgerald & Noblit, 2000; Hedgcock & Atkinson, 1993). However, research with IESL children has not yet documented their emergent reading behaviors in kindergarten. In addition, there is a need to link the reading and writing behaviors of kindergarten ESL children to patterns of reading and writing development. We need research to examine whether the emergent and beginning reading and writing behaviors of ESL learners develop in the same predictable developmental stages as those of English-speaking children (Cochran-Smith, 1984; Teale & Sulzby, 1986). This effort, in turn, needs to be socially and instructionally situated so as to view literacy development in context (Davis, 1995). In particular, descriptions of different types of classroom instruction may shed light on how certain literacy practices might nurture or otherwise hinder literacy development (Toohey, 1998).

This study was designed to extend this knowledge base by relating children's process of becoming literate in a second language to specific classroom literacy practices. By describing how children constructed literacy understandings in the context of the literacy instruction they received, the present study traces the interrelationship between oral language, reading, and writing development. Thus, this study addresses the following questions: 1) In what ways did classroom literacy practices support children's growth in oral language, reading, and writing? and 2) What did children's literacy behaviors and literacy development look like?

Theoretical Framework

This study draws on social constructivist theory as it relates to an emerging literacy perspective. The principal tenets of social constructivism are that: 1) language mediates learning (Vygotsky, 1978) and 2) children construct knowledge through their engagement in peer interactions and through scaffolded interactions with adults (Spivey, 1997). Asocial constructivist model of early literacy is concerned with how young children emerge to literacy in particular cultural and social contexts. This model of social constructivism in early childhood informs the present study in the following ways: 1) literacy is based on the intent to make sense of social events, and 2) young readers and writers engage in the same types of literacy processes as those engaged in by older children and adults, albeit at less sophisticated levels (Crawford, 1995).

Research on emergent literacy offers the construct of literacy event as a way to look at how literacy learning is context-specific and socially constructed. The way language mediates meaning-making attempts and the ways in which children appropriate and construct literacy knowledge is inextricably linked to the specific print-related materials being used and to the implicit rules for participating in literacy practices. Thus, literacy events frame the study as units of analysis.

According to Heath (1982), literacy events constitute "those occasions in which the talk revolves around a piece of writing" (p. 96). Others, like Teale, Estrada, and Anderson (1981), define reading events as those instances in which participants attempt to make sense of a message encoded graphically. Literacy learning is embedded in these event-specific interactions around print, with the teacher and peer groups as active participants in the construction of literacy (Rowe, 1998). Specifically, literacy events are "distinguished for participants by differing expectations for the content of events, differing roles for participants and books, and differing ways of talking, moving, and relating to objects" (Rowe, 1998, p. 17).

In addition, emergent literacy research suggests that young children also shape literacy events beyond what the teacher intends, and that they may create their own literacy practices and events (CochranSmith, 1984; Dyson, 1989; Rowe, 1989). This implies that children are not passive recipients of knowledge, but rather are active participants in the construction of literacy knowledge. Such an orientation enabled the researcher to view learners as constructors or active agents with a purpose, possibly capable of changing received knowledge (Hruby, 2001).

Method

Participants and Setting

This yearlong investigation took place in a predominantly Portuguese immigrant community in the eastern United States. Approximately 40% of the children at the elementary school (K-8) where the study was conducted speak Portuguese, being children of Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants. Also, the staff is predominantly of Portuguese descent. The kindergarten teacher an experienced kindergarten bilingual teacher, had been teaching in this school for 18 years. The full-day kindergarten class included 20 children, of whom 6 were Brazilian. The criterion for inclusion in the Portuguese bilingual classroom was the kindergarten children's performance on the Language Assessment Battery (LAB). A score below the 40th percentile or a raw score of 26 points in the Listening and Speaking portions of this test determined eligibility for bilingual education. The children's mean initial language proficiency was 7.4 points; the class range was 17.5.

Data Collection and Procedures

The research questions called for a description of classroom literacy practices and for viewing literacy in the classroom from the participants' points of view (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The researcher wanted to understand the particular context within which participants act and the influence the context had on their actions, and to understand the process by which events and actions take place (Maxwell, 1996). The researcher spent the first month of school becoming familiar with the setting and establishing her role as a participant-observer (her participation was moderate, maintaining a balance between being an outsider and an insider) (Spradley, 1979). Occasionally, the researcher would help pass out materials or escort a child to the office or to the nurse's office, but she never interfered with classroom instruction. From her usual seat on the piano bench, she could get a good view of the classroom and take field notes (Figure 1).

Data collection took place in this space during the 65 classroom observations conducted throughout the school year. Data sources included: 1) field notes; 2) audiotapes; 3) collection of artifacts from the children and the classroom, such as notes to and from parents, copies of workbook pages, classroom notices, copies of report cards, and test scores; 4) periodic photographs of wall charts, blackboard entries, and displays of children's work; and 5) informal interviews with the teacher.

Field notes served to identify literacy events. Data collection continued according to the unique set of literacy-related components observed: the same general purpose for exploring print, the same participants in the same physical setting, and the same rules for participating in a given literacy activity. Audiotaping began only in January after literacy events had been clearly identified, for a total of 12 hours that were transcribed exactly as heard with information added about the speaker(s), addressee(s), and details about the ongoing literacy event. Speech delivered in Portuguese was transcribed in Portuguese and then translated into English. The researcher photocopied the children's work--namely, journal entries--once a week and took bimonthly photographs of classroom uses of print. Interviews with the teacher were structured as conversations that occurred throughout the year (Spradley, 1979). At times, the researcher took notes while conversing with the teacher during her preparation periods. Other tim es, the teacher volunteered information on classroom changes and on her plans for a given day.

Data Analysis

Data analysis was ongoing during the period of data collection. For example, reviewing field notes helped narrow the focus to literacy events representative of how literacy was practiced in the classroom. Beginning in January of the school year, the analysis of a day's audiotapes became an important step in identifying the literacy features characteristic of different literacy events. In describing literacy practices, the researcher noted overlapping features and differences across three literacy events. Other classroom data sources made it possible to look for "disconfirming evidence and discrepant cases" (Florio-Ruane, 1990). Specifically, children's and classroom artifacts, photographs, and teacher interview data served to confirm or identify discrepancies between the literacy practices noted for the different literacy events in the field notes and in the audiotaped teacher-student interactions.

Analysis of literacy practices within literacy events. Based on the identification of classroom literacy events as units of analysis, the researcher looked for the literacy practices that categorized each of the three events--Circle/Reading, Phonics/Handwriting, and Journal Writing. For Circle/Reading, identification of literacy practices was obtained primarily from the audiotaped transcriptions of the literacy events, which always included readings from the Scholastic literature-based series (Scholastic Literacy Place, 1996). The recurrence of certain practices was noted across all the recorded interactions between teacher and students, and then compared to field note entries. Open coding of transcribed data served to list the properties of the literacy practices during Circle/Reading events (Glazer & Strauss, 1967).

In the analysis of Circle/Reading, the description of literacy features was contextualized within a total of 10 Circle/Reading events spanning from January to May of the school year. Close analysis was conducted on those Circle/Reading events (about 2 every month) for which the researcher had recorded data from the onset to the closing. Other recorded Circle/Reading Time events were considered to confirm or otherwise disconfirm emerging interpretations.

For Phonics/Handwriting events, a combination of classroom artifacts, such as phonics books and photographs along with field notes, was used to identify the embedded literacy practices. Classroom artifacts such as big books and literacy charts served to document the forms of writing produced by the children. In addition, classroom photographs of these artifacts provided for triangulation (Yin, 1994) of sources and served to document time frames. For example, photographs offered a snapshot of children's literacy development throughout the year.

For Journal Writing events, the primary sources of data analyzed were field notes and children's journal entries. Copies of all the children's journals allowed the researcher to note the children's writing strategies and the functions or purposes associated with each individual journal entry. Concurrently, the researcher constructed a chart on which the X-axis was coded with writing strategies and the Y-axis with the writing purposes. These two axes were graphed according to the characteristics of children's writing.

Analysis of children's literacy development. Using Gillet and Temple's (1990) stages of writing development--pre-phonemic, letter name, transitional, and conventional--the researcher identified children's most sophisticated journal entries (not necessarily their last ones), and matched them to a particular developmental stage. Other data sources, namely field notes, were checked to confirm whether a child's performance in other literacy tasks was congruent with the stage suggested by the journal entry. In addition, field notes that detailed peer conversations and the books that children responded to in their logs added information on how the writing evolved at a particular table. For example, a child might have displayed transitional spelling in one journal entry, but the field notes would indicate that he or she copied the spelling from another child. In those instances, the child was assigned a less advanced stage of spelling development.

Finally, children's knowledge of high-frequency words at the beginning of January of the school year (pre-test) was compared with their knowledge of the same words at the end of the year (post-test), using the high-frequency word guide in the Scholastic Literacy Place (1996) for this assessment. The words "I," "be," and "a" were excluded, however, because children might not recognize them as words but rather as letters.

Discovering literacy themes. Discovering literacy opportunities was an inductive process, based on the types of literacy practices that characterized the different literacy events and considering the teacher's literacy views, the children's interpretations of literacy events and practices, and the children's evolving identity as readers and writers. The researcher tabulated classroom data in summary charts that described the literacy practices according to each literacy event. Then, using the constant-comparative method (Glazer & Strauss, 1967), the literacy practices for each literacy event were grouped into two distinct categories that reflect the literacy themes. The names of the teacher and children mentioned in this study are pseudonyms.

Findings

Three literacy events--Circle/Reading, Journal Writing, and Phonics/Handwriting--were identified as central to the kindergarten literacy curriculum. These categories emerged from the data and were confirmed by Ms. B.'s literacy orientation. Ms. B. believed that balancing phonics instruction with whole language instruction would benefit the children. Her instructional decision is reflected in two bipolar literacy themes-emergent literacy and conventional literacy--which emerged as frames for classroom literacy practices embedded in the three types of events. These two literacy orientations might be enacted during the same literacy event. For example, Circle/Reading was a time for the children to engage in both emergent reading and conventional reading. In contrast, non-conventional writing predominated during Journal Writing and conventional reading and writing predominated during Phonics/Handwriting.

Circle/Reading

Ms. B. would begin storybook reading by activating children's background knowledge about the story to be read. She might initiate an oral discussion, or use the Language Experience Approach (LEA). Ms. B. used Circle/Reading to ease children's transition to English literacy, emphasizing both the emergent and conventional aspects of reading. Specifically, children could create their own sentences based on their emerging knowledge of oral language, but Ms. B. translated their responses into a conventional, decontextualized written language register. Ms. B. used Portuguese to model how language should be used in a written-like register before introducing children to predictable, "I like..." type of books. This practice is evident in the following Language Experience interaction concerning children's favorite activities (tape transcript, 10/1/96, p. 9).

Ms. B.: Samuel, think of something you really, really love to do. 'What is that? Diz, o que e que tu gostas de fazer? (Tell me, what do you like to do?)

Samuel: Eu gosto de brincar no jardim. (I like to play in the garden.)

Ms. B.: O.K. Ele disse em Port. It's O.K. Esta bem. (O.K. He said it in Portuguese. Very good.)

Ms. B.: Alex, tell me your favorite.

Alex: I like to play with a shoe.

Ms. B.: That's original. That's why I see you playing with a shoe.

Roberto: I like to drive a car.

Ms. B.: Tu gostas de guiar um carro? (You like to drive a car?) I like to drive a car (writes it down).

Ms. B.: Teresa, o que e que tu gostas de brincar? Eu... (Teresa, what do you like to play? I...)

Teresa: Barbie.

Ms. B.: Que e que tu gostas de fazer com a Barbie? (What do you like to do with the Barbie?)

Tania: Barbie.

Ms. B.: Come over here and write your name. (Ms. B. writes Barbie and Tania writes her name.)

Ms. B.: Pedro, what is your favorite activity?

Pedro: I like to play with a little car.

Ms. B.: See, what Ms. B. is trying to get from you is for you to speak in complete sentences.

Ms. B.: "I" Look, the word "I," always the same. It's referring to you. I am Ms. B. If I asked you, you would say, "I am Laura." Right? "I, yourself."

As the school year progressed, Ms. B. continued to work with the children on matching print to spoken language and to encourage them to speak in complete sentences--a written language convention--in either Portuguese or English. Similarly, Ms. B. consistently used children's background knowledge about a topic and made text-to-life connections when introducing a new book. Of particular note, during storybook reading, Ms. B. directed children to match spoken words to print, but she also encouraged them to derive meaning from pictures and to read predictable story lines. Often, these literacy practices were interwoven in the same story reading event (tape transcript, 10/15/96, p. 15).

Ms. B.: "I," look at the word, "I am a..."

Kids: special.

Ms. B.: You are special, but that's not what it is saying. "I am a... friend." What do you see here? What is the friend doing?

Kids: Playing.

Ms. B.: And what is here? A wagon. The boy is pushing the wagon. And who is chasing the girl?

Kids: The boy.

Ms. B.: Very good. Look at this word, you can read this word for me.

Kids: "I"

Ms. B.: "...am a..." that's a long word. Do you know what a neighbor is? A neighbor is a person that lives...

Jack: next door.

Ms. B.: Yes, we all have neighbors, right? How do we say neighbors in Portuguese?

Tania: Vizinhos.

In the above interaction, reading results from using a variety of strategies to derive meaning from print. Namely, reading resulted from the use of background knowledge and from the use of picture clues to derive meaning from print. Ms. B. activated children's prior knowledge of neighbors, and she directed them to look at the pictures. However, Ms. B. also stressed that following print is necessary, and she corrected the children when they said "special" instead of "friend."

During other Circle/Reading interactions, she encouraged children to use their knowledge of print concepts along with their knowledge of beginning sounds and sight vocabulary. For example, Ms. B. might say, "I want you to show me the words [up, down] from left to right, make believe you are reading and you will find them" (tape transcript, 1/14/97, p. 23). In this way, children were encouraged to engage in conventional reading.

The balance between conventional reading, with its focus on decoding, and nonconventional or emergent reading, with its focus on reading pictures, was evident during Circle/Reading. Out of a total of 10 transcriptions of Circle/Reading interactions, 47 teacher-initiated turns focused on nonconventional reading behaviors, while 43 focused on conventional reading behaviors. Typically, the latter focused on decoding and sight word recognition, while the former focused on reading by repeating predictable or memorized text and by using context cues such as pictures to derive meaning from text. This is evidence of a good balance between these two forms of reading.

Sometimes, however, the emergent reading activities almost entirely took the form of the children repeating predictable language structures and reading pictures. Ms. B. engaged children in repeated readings of the same story, facilitating children's nonconventional reading by finishing story lines. This is evident in a second reading of the book Darcey and Gran Don't Like Babies by Jane Cutler (1996) (tape transcript, 12/10/96, p. 17):

Ms. B.: Look at the picture; what do you see in the picture?

Brianna: She didn't like his smell. She didn't like his looks.

Ms. B. "'I don't like the baby,' Darcey told the..."

Kids: "... father."

Ms. B.: "'I don't like the baby,' Darcey told the..."

Kids: "... neighbor."

Ms. B.: "'Of course you do,' said the neighbor." So, everyone is telling Darcey different things. The mother said, "You like the baby." The father said, "You'll like the baby later on when the baby can do more things." The doctor said, "You're not..."

Kids: "... supposed to like the baby."

Ms. B.: And the neighbor said, "Of course, ..." what?

Kids: "Of course, you like the baby."

The way children participated in reading during Circle/Reading indicates that they readily learned how to read predictable text and to derive meaning from pictures. In addition, they understood how to match spoken words with print and to recognize words by sight. For example, they read words such as "the" in story titles and guessed the rest of the title by looking at pictures. This did not occur as a response to the teacher's request, but rather was done spontaneously as soon as the children saw the teacher display a book cover. Their appraisals of literature were also spontaneous and reflected their own opinions about the stories Ms. B. read to them. Indeed, the children's growing appropriation of literacy during story reading events became more and more apparent as the school year progressed. By March of the school year, the children initiated questions and gave opinions about the stories. Some of their views arose as a response to Ms. B's questions, such as "How does it make you feel?," "What do you think is going to happen next?," "What was your favorite part?," and "Why do you think that?" Subsequently, the children made unsolicited comments such as, "That was a good story," "I like that story," "That was a beautiful story," "I don't like it."

Clearly, children internalized the view that their background experiences expressed first in Portuguese and then in English, their picture reading, and their opinions were a part of the reading process, along with conventional reading. Thus, they developed a collective sense of literacy ownership that is evident in their views of themselves as readers. A Circle/Reading interaction around the book Peter's Chair (Keats, 1996) illustrates children's views of themselves as readers (tape transcript, 3/25/97, p. 51).

Ms. B.: Think of things that you can do now that you couldn't do when you were a baby.

Nelson: We could do our work in school.

Brianna: We can eat.

Ms. B.: You can eat by yourselves. Can a baby eat by himself? What can a baby do?

Luendreo: Just cry.

Ms. B.: Yes, a baby can cry. Why does a baby cry, do you know? Can a baby talk?

Kids: NO!

Ms. B.: Can a baby say, "I'm hungry"?

Kids: NO.

Ms. B.: As you grow bigger and bigger,

what other things can you do?

Tania: Dress.

Ms. B.: Babies cannot dress themselves.

Nelson: Babies can't read.

Luendreo: They can't walk.

Nelson: They can't read.

Ms. B.: That's something you're learning right now. Babies can't read. Right now, can you read by yourselves?

Kids: Yes.

Ms. B.: No, you're learning to read all by yourselves, but by next year, well by the end of next year, you should be able to read a small book all by yourselves.

Melissa: We can draw by ourselves.

The children's sense of themselves as readers grew out of their literacy experiences during Circle/Reading. Namely, they were encouraged to use their background knowledge, repeat predictable story lines, and use picture clues to derive meaning from print. Thus, they viewed themselves as readers, regardless of whether or not they could read by translating printed symbols into spoken words. This collective belief was apparent in this classroom at other times. For example, the children read environmental print to find out the day of the week and read Ms. B.'s signature in books they chose to browse at snack time. The way Ms. B. fostered emergent literacy and provided a print-rich environment had unanticipated effects that clearly challenged her conception of the reading process.

A close look at how children practiced literacy during Journal Writing also indicates that many students developed ownership of the writing process. Alone or in collaboration with peers, but without teacher assistance, children developed their own purposes and strategies for writing. These appear tied to the language of picture books and to the nature of meaning-making strategies during Circle/Reading.

Journal Writing

In mid-January, Ms. B. introduced literature response journals to the kindergarten class and instructed the children as follows: "Draw and write something about your favorite part of the story. As you hear the sounds in words, write them down" (field notes, 1/15/97, p. 52). Ms. B. never checked students' work for accuracy during Journal Writing, as she did during Phonics/Handwriting. Moreover, she never modeled emergent writing behaviors as she modeled emergent reading behaviors during Circle/Reading. Instead, teacher talk during Journal Writing provided scaffolds for children to accurately depict their drawings and demonstrate their knowledge of text vocabulary.

However, children were free to discuss different topics and express their opinions using extended discourse. They had control over their writing strategies and could construct personal meanings from stories while working collaboratively. Children were free to depict the scenes or characters that interested them and to choose either drawing, copying, or listening for sounds as writing strategies. The following example of teacher and student talk during a journal response to the book Listen to the Sound of the Desert (Mora, 1996a) illustrates how writing events were constructed (field notes, 3/25/96, p. 112).

Nelson: I hate wolf because they eat you.

Melissa: Could you draw two animals?

Nelson: I'm doing a flamingo.

Ms. B.: How many legs does a flamingo have?

Nelson: Two; this is a tail.

Ms. B.: But they have wings.

Nelson: Does a yak has a tail?

Nelson: How do you write "snake"?

Melissa: Think.

Nelson: I'm writing "snake." (Nelson copies from Melissa.)

Nelson: I don't want to write about the book.

Raphael: How do you spell "listen"?

Nelson: /L/

In the children's collaborative work, they primarily discussed how to write words to label pictures. At times, they copied each other's writing, and at other times they searched for the book that was read during Circle/Reading to copy its title, a word, or a sentence. When the children's goal merely was to label their drawings, a successful strategy was copying words from others and from books. However, children also responded to literature by retelling a story. When they did so, the children relied primarily on their own knowledge of sound-symbol correspondences to sound out words.

Children's retellings might be embedded in drawings, or they might have reflected their memories of a book's language. For example, in response to the book Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Galdone, 1996), one child drew a big chair and around it wrote, "and the liet BEAR." In response to the same book, another child drew a bear and wrote, "crie the B" (cried the bear). Conversely, children might encode the full meaning of their drawings in a complete sentence to reflect the language used by a protagonist. For example, one child wrote, "Im aaz nis e Rabit" (I'm as nice as a rabbit) in response to the book Listen to the Sounds of the Desert (Mora, 1996a). Thus, retellings conveyed both the book's narrative structure and a protagonist's dialogue. Also, children might retell a story by using their own interpretative language expressed in invented spelling. For example, one child wrote, "The ver Aod man punP the top" (The very old man pulled the turnip) in response to the book Pablo's Tree (Mora, 1996b).

In addition, children often chose to write journal entries to express their personal opinions. For example, a child wrote "mi frit is bas's" (My favorite is bus), another wrote "I love to see the wiglos" (wheels). They also told about themselves in relation to the text (e.g., "I se Rabit"). Thus, the purposes associated with children's writing include their intentions to: 1) label or name a picture, 2) retell a story, 3) express personal opinions, and 4) tell about the self in relation to the text. In working to accomplish these purposes, children used an array of writing strategies to create their texts. They might embed invented spelling in their pictures, use invented spelling alone, use invented spelling that reflected book-like language, or copy words from books and peers. Table I shows the relationship between children's writing purposes and the strategies they used to accomplish those purposes.

Children copied words from books and from each other primarily to label their pictures. Conversely, retelling stories led to their use of a variety of writing strategies. Although children's written retellings might mirror the language used in literature, they did not choose to copy words from books to retell stories. Invented spelling was the children's preferred writing strategy when expressing their opinions and when connecting their experiences with the text. In addition, children started to use more advanced invented spellings than those suggested by Ms. B. in early January. Many children were not merely writing the sounds as they heard them, which would be consistent with a letter-name stage of orthographic knowledge, they were also producing transitional spellings and conventional spellings, which shows their attention to visual patterns in words (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 1996; Gillet & Temple, 1990). Thus, the children understood that they should not only write words the way they "soun d," but also pay attention to how they look.

Phonics/Handwriting

Ms. B. often started a Phonics lesson by asking children to generate words that started with a particular sound or by asking them to name objects with the same letter/sound. These activities always followed Circle/Reading, except on those days when children did Journal Writing instead of Phonics/Handwriting. At times, Ms. B. worked with children seated at table 3 (see Figure 1). She used picture cards and asked children about vocabulary words in Portuguese. Then, Ms. B. offered the English equivalent to the Portuguese words and stressed the beginning sound in English. After that, with the whole group, she proceeded to list words on a wall chart (field notes, 2/5/97, p. 75). For example, she would write a particular letter on top of the chart, illustrate the sound it made, and then ask the children to volunteer words that started with that sound.

Ms. B.: What begins with /f/?

Melissa: Fire drill, fish tank.

Kevin: Father.

Monica: Frog.

Nelson: Forehead.

Ms. B.: Kevin, you learned something new today--what do birds have?

Kevin: Feathers.

Kevin was able to participate in this group activity because he had had small-group instruction on beginning sounds. Before telling him words that started with /f/, Ms. B. activated Kevin's knowledge of birds and of the word "penas," the Portuguese word for "feathers." Thus, Kevin was able to contribute to the wall chart, which the children then read with the teacher. At times, Ms. B. stopped and encouraged children to determine how to read the listed words on their own. She assisted children by telling them to put the sounds together and to look at the middle and end sounds and then put them together. Thus, wall charts served to give children practice with beginning sounds and practice in blending those sounds together to decode words. After the wall chart was completed, selected children walked to the big easel next to the reading center and drew pictures for the class ABC book. They were instructed to draw only in this book, but they often chose to label their drawings using invented spelling. For example, for /d/, children wrote Dog and Dolar. For /c/ they wrote "cat," "chrsm" (for Christmas), and "cayn" (for crayon).

The phonics work around wall charts and the children's work on the ABC book were always linked to the activities in the phonics workbook. Concurrent work on the same letters and letter sounds could last one or two weeks. Typically, after completion of the wall charts, Ms. B. instructed children to complete the phonics workbook pages for the week's beginning sound. They named pictures for a particular sound and drew "lines to connect the pictures whose names begin with the same sound" (Phonics, 1995, p. 29). For example, "sock" should be connected to "suit," "belt" to "boat," and "wallet" to "watch." Ms. B. checked these connections and wrote words next to the pictures. Finally, she underlined the first letter of every word.

In the Handwriting book, children practiced writing upper- and lowercase letters with correct strokes, and they made circles around the upper- and lowercase letters in short poems that accompanied the letter for a given day (e.g., Humpty Dumpty for /h/). In addition, in the available space under the poem, children drew pictures of things that started with that letter sound. As was the case with the ABC book, some children labeled their pictures using invented spelling. Although Ms. B. did not cross out these words, she insisted that this was a drawing activity by saying, "I prefer that you draw" (field notes, 2/18/97, p. 82). As they composed their drawings, children's talk was collaborative and focused on the beginning sounds represented in the drawings (field notes, 3/5/97, p. 101).

Luendreo: Oh, I know how to draw a gorilla.

Nelson: gggray.

Melissa: grass.

Luendreo: I don't know how to draw his feet. How do you draw the gorilla's feet?

Nelson: I know what begins with Z: zoo, zipper.

Luendreo: zigg, zagg, zoo. What begins with gg, gobble gobble, gobble. How do you spell "gobble"?

Nelson: I'm making the sounds that gobble, gobble makes. It's noisy!

Ms. B.: Who makes gobble, gobble?

Nelson: The turkey.

Jessica: Chicken is turkey? Is it?

Nelson: Chicken is chicken.

Teacher: Turkey is bigger.

Jessica: Fatter.

Luendreo: It cannot fly.

Nelson: Chicken is skinnier. Green, gray, I know something that begins with /g/.

The children's talk was tied to the task at hand and to their individual needs as writers. It is apparent that the children tried to make sense of the beginning sounds. They wanted to know if chickens are the same as turkeys, and they helped each other determine whether this was the case or not. However, peer assistance for writing wasn't always available and children's talk didn't always occur as a response to the talk of others, but rather as a response to their individual drawings. However, one member of the group might use an idea expressed by another member of the group. For example, when Luendreo did not receive assistance in spelling the word for the noise a turkey makes, he followed Nelson's strategy of drawing the sounds of gobble. In contrast, in her workbook Melissa wrote on her own "grea" for "grey" and "grepas" for "grapes." Other children similarly chose to label their drawings with invented spelling, which seemed to occur in this context as a natural extension of Journal Writing practices. Howe ver, because Ms. B. insisted that they only draw, children tended to reserve this literacy practice to Journal Writing events.

The children apparently naturally transferred strategies across contexts. They transposed Ms. B.'s bipolar literacy orientations of emergent literacy versus conventional literacy as they carried over to Phonics events the same meaning-making strategies they used during Journal Writing, such as invented spelling. Similarly, children's group work during Journal Writing and the joint construction of meaning between teacher and students during Circle/Reading nurtured a view of literacy that centers on using language to make meaning. The practice and application of skills was contextualized in meaningful literacy practices.

Children's Literacy Development

At the end of the kindergarten year; 13 children were at various stages of writing development, as demonstrated by their journal writing and by observations of their spelling. Gillet and Temple (1990) distinguish among three stages of invented spelling: 1) early phonemic, 2) letter-name, and 3) transitional. The early phonemic spellers typically represent a word with a single letter, usually the first recognizable sound. The letter-name spellers use the names of letters to represent sounds. They represent all the consonants in a word, but do not use vowels. The transitional spellers use vowels, and the words they write resemble real words. Also, they may use some real words (conventional spelling) in their writing.

According to Gillet and Temple's stages, 9 children were transitional spellers, 1 was a letter-name speller, 3 were at the early phonemic stage of writing development, and 7 children did not experiment with writing. For example, a transitional speller spelled "boll" for "ball" and "mozy" for "museum." The letter-name speller wrote "museum" as "mzm." A child writing at the early phonemic stage wrote "ILTPB" for "I like to play ball" and another wrote "dn" and "tp" for "down" and "top," respectively. The transitional spellers also spelled many words conventionally and, for the most part, did not seem to go through a letter-name stage before this one. They may have passed through the letter-name stage before they began to engage in Journal Writing until January.

The children's development in reading showed great gains in word recognition. The pre- and post-tests assessed children's ability to read the following high-frequency words: like, we, can, am, see, you, and, where, is, the, my, your, what, who, it, go, and to (Scholastic Literacy Place, 1996). The entire class recognized 34 words in January and 171 words in June. However, while most children made considerable gains, the range between modest and dramatic improvement was widespread. Also, three children did not recognize any words by the end of the year. Nevertheless, the coefficient of variation in the post-test results (0.7) is lower than that in the pre-test (1.5). That is, there was more variation in word knowledge among the children in January than at the end of the school year. The results of the word recognition pre- and post-tests are summarized in Table 2.

Discussion

This study suggests that children's literacy development is linked to classroom literacy instruction. Oral native langnage support and a balanced approach to literacy instruction helped these Portuguese-speaking children develop complex understandings about written language. The children in this study negotiated the teacher's competing literacy orientations and constructed their own interpretations of literacy events. They crossed the boundaries between conventional literacy and emergent literacy to serve their own purposes for engaging in literacy practices. Reading and writing behaviors appeared embedded in meaning-making attempts, marked by an interrelationship between oral language and written language uses. Talking about literature and reading and writing as a response to stories provided the basis for children to construct literacy knowledge. The complexity of discussions during Circle/Reading time led children to explore the meaning of stories and acquire the language of storybooks. This, coupled with the phonics knowledge they acquired during Phonics/Handwriting events, helped them construct journal responses to literature.

Ms. B.'s approach to literacy instruction stressed the importance of phonics and of constructing meaning from text within aliterature-based program. Her emergent and/ or conventional demands as a function of the literacy task appear linked to her conscious desire to balance her curriculum. Balanced instruction gives equal weight to phonics and integrated language instruction (Freppon & Dahl, 1998; Weaver, 1998); emergent literacy leads to conventional reading and writing (McGee & PurcellGates, 1997). This study supports the notion that a balanced literacy program supports ESL children's literacy growth and suggests that their emergent literacy behaviors develop to resemble more conventional forms in much the same way this process evolves for native English speakers.

The children's limited English proficiency did not preclude them from constructing written language knowledge. Their growth as readers and writers was evident throughout the school year. They received direct instruction in recognizing phonemes, especially beginning sounds, during phonics exercises, but not in representing them in their own writing. Nevertheless, in exploring the functions of written language during journal writing, the children established meaning-form links. Similarly, Ms. B. explicitly modeled how to recognize words in the literature while reading, and so the children learned to recognize words. These results are in accord with the self-teaching hypothesis put forth by Torgesen and Hecht (1996)--namely, that children armed with letter-name knowledge, phonological awareness, and an understanding of basic letter-sound relationships can teach themselves how to read, provided they are immersed in a print-rich environment.

The children's increasing spelling sophistication showed that some children developed the ability to exploit sound-letter correspondences and attend to visual patterns in words consistent with a transitional stage of spelling development. It is interesting that more developed writing forms appeared when children experimented with narrative-like writing. This finding suggests that this form of writing should be encouraged as a way to foster writing development. Children's word recognition knowledge also increased considerably. It appears that most children engaged in, at the very least, logographic reading. That is, they attended to visual cues or the contour of the spelling to read high-frequency words (Ehri & Wilce, 1985). This is known to be an important steppingstone in beginning readers' development (Juel, 2000; Share & Stanovich, 1995). It is also noteworthy that the ESL children in this classroom also read at that level, despite their limited English proficiency. This finding adds to our understanding o f ESL reading at the beginning stages of development.

The findings also indicate that children recognized high-frequency words from a few exposures to word learning through contextualized, holistic experiences with literature. Whereas a few children did not develop this optimal invented spelling and word learning skill, it is also noted in the literature that native English-speaking children's literacy skills emerge at different paces. In particular, research indicates that literacy abilities vary extremely during the kindergarten year (McGee & Richgels, 1990).

Although this investigation indicates that ESL children are capable of attaining high levels of literacy development in the context of a balanced literacy program, it does not begin to address how this might negatively affect the development of their native language. As Wong-Fillmore (1991) noted, it is very easy for children to lose their native language literacy skills when the language is not extensively used for instructional purposes. In this community, however, Portuguese children often attend heritage schools where Portuguese is taught and where they can obtain advanced language proficiency certificates. Literacy development in two languages is rarely parallel, but it seems imperative to give bilingual children adequate exposure and motivation to become literate in both their first and second languages.

Table 1

Children's Writing Purposes and Strategies

                                       Strategies

Purposes          Copy print  Use invented    Use         Use invented
                  from books  spellings that  invented    spellings
                  and peers   reflect their   spellings   that reflect
                              own text        that        a book's
                              interpretation  complete a  written
                                              drawing     language

Label pictures        +             +

Retell stories                      +               +            +

Express personal                    +
opinions

Connect self                        +
to text
Table 2

Children's Word Recognition Knowledge

            Pre-test  Post-test  Gain

Student 1       0         9        9
Student 2      10        17        7
Student 3       0         9        9
Student 4       4        10        6
Student 5       1        15       14
Student 6       1         2        1
Student 7       5        16       11
Student 8       2        13       11
Student 9       0         3        3
Student 10      0        11       11
Student 11      0         0        0
Student 12      3        17       14
Student 13      0         9        9
Student 14      1         3        2
Student 15      0         7        7
Student 16      0         0        0
Student 17      0         0        0
Student 18      0         5        5
Student 19      5        15       10
Student 20      2        10        8

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Author Notes: Special thanks to the remarkable teacher and children in this classroom. This research was supported in part by: Fundacao pam a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal.