The Influential Interactions of Pre-Kindergarten Writers

This article examines six years of ethnographic research in Robyn Davis's pre-kindergarten classroom in the USA. Using a theoretical framework to embed writing within a social semiotic that is multimodal and has social intent (Street, 2003), the authors show how children used interactions during writing to create various written products. Three themes emerged from their findings: (1) interactions among children challenge their writing identities; (2) interactions among children introduce new possibilities in their writing; and (3) interactions among children with more knowledgeable peers help push writers forward with their writing acquisition. Through these findings, the authors conclude that peer interactions among four- and five-year-old children are influential in their writing processes and products. (Contains 14 figures.)