If reading is making explicit what is otherwise implicit then writing is making implicit what remains otherwise explicit.

Reading depends upon writing and vice versa. Both are complementary processes of actively decoding and encoding the written text of a language in a coherent and sensible manner. It has become increasingly recognized by educators and researchers that reading and writing are complementary processes of a single and complex input-output learning cycle that involves the use of print literacy in the serial decoding and encoding of multiple texts in context. There is no saying in this central learning loop that reading and writing have any necessary sense of order in relation to one another, but one follows from the other as naturally as listening may follow and interact with speaking.

In writing we are concerned foremost with the transfer of experience and meaning from thought to print. In these pages I offer a rudimentary theory based upon a heuristic model of symbolic acquisition and upon my own framework of symbolic linguistics, of invented or "natural" writing that follows a normal, culturally constrained developmental paradigm in the progressive and hierarchical acquisition of integrated literacy skills.

Advanced writing fluency, proficiency and competency tends to be developmentally delayed and follows upon the heels of the acquisition of a host of other basic literacy skills that underlie writing literacy. Nevertheless, children from the earliest age in a print-based culture show a natural interest and proclivity towards written self-expression and response, a pattern that remains persistent and consistent throughout the life-cycle unless it becomes frustrated in its subsequent development.

If the model I propose is even approximately accurate and realistic, then there is significant evidence to suggest that our society may be systematically and inadvertently turning children off to writing even as they gain mastery in other literacy skills. A prescriptive, structured emphasis upon the "work" aspects of writing that focuses upon correct grammar and orthography, upon communication and informational content, may tend to preclude the balanced descriptive development of the "play" aspects of writing that emphasizes experiential self-expression, or voice, phraseological elaboration and the metaphorical-metalogical word-symbol relationships that are possible in writing. In a literate, print-based culture, writing provides a principle vehicle and mechanism for an individual's development of ego and reality-integration, therefore the challenges and problematics of development of writing and balanced literacy skills should be a fundamental concern of any school curriculum.

Language and thought are not rigidly bound in any predetermined manner. Much of language is "pre-logical" and may only work its way to thought by approximation or suggestion, implication or intuition. On the other hand, language may only imperfectly express and consummate abstract meaning and feeling. Language and thought may influence one another in many ways, and yet remain essentially and arbitrarily separate systems. Skill in writing proficiency and fluency is the capacity to select and construct succinct phrases that are able to effectively capture the fullest intent of one's meaning. The achievement of this skill is an advanced accomplishment that comes only through years of training and practice in the basic operations involved with writing and the stylistic elaborations of these operations into a written form that is unique to the personality and manner of the author.

Mastery of the skill of writing is the most complex and delayed component of the development of literacy and language arts learning in children. The skill of effective writing requires the mastery of a number of foundational skills in spelling, vocabulary development, in grammar, syntax and stylistics. Fluency in writing as a goal is non-isomorphic to the development of relative fluency in speaking or reading, though it depends greatly on the achievement of relative levels of reading and speaking ability.

Many adults continue to have poorly developed writing skills in spite of many years of education and having highly developed reading and speaking skills. Development of writing proficiency and fluency is a function of time, experience, natural ability and motivation, ethnocultural orientation and situation, and the language that is the main medium of written expression. Few people are born with a genuine talent for written expression, but many people are born with the innate capacity not only to write proficiently and fluently, but to write well. These skills cannot be achieved overnight and it requires years for its mastery. Nevertheless, writing is a basic literacy skill that underlies most knowledge-based activities and domains of production/reproduction in print-based society, and its mastery is clearly a sign of intellectual achievement and higher order mental development and symbolic integration.

I base my hypothesis and applied framework on the medium of the English language, though I believe in its essential components this theory is non-exclusive to many other language mediums, especially those that are associated with a written history of development of a formal system of writing. Fortunately, English has a very large and elaborated lexicon, and a very deep and variegated history of language development. It has a complex system of morphophonemic conditioning and word-change processes, as well as a complex phraseological structure. This phraseological structure of the English language is largely ignored as a central aspect of language development and acquisition. The English language has a central cultural emphasis in literature with a relatively high regard for sophisticated literacy skills. Furthermore, English as a medium of written expression has found development in many genres, forms and styles of such expression. Many of the ethnocultural differentials of rate and levels of relative academic achievement may be explanable and tied back to the history, structure and nature of the primary language of a particular ethnocultural civilization.

In this piece I make a claim for invented writing (i.e., kid's writing) as the natural pattern of development of writing abilities in children that is a function and ontogenetic consequence of the natural development of linguistic differentiation of the child's symbolic articulation of reality. As such, it can be expected to develop in a natural sequence of stages that are marked by predictable patterns of response that are coordinate to the child's development of word-pattern recognition skills and also with their development of reading and spelling skills. Allowing and encouraging children to naturally write through these stages in a non-judgmental and non-didactic manner should result in the facilitation of student writing abilities and not in its frustration. Children in print-based societies show a natural curiosity in the process of writing and a natural inclination to try to master the skill of writing. Unfortunately, the burdensome manner in which writing has been traditionally taught has served to frustrate more than facilitate these natural predispositions in most people, with the consequence that writing by most adults is seen not as a manner of self-expression but as a chore to be avoided at almost any cost. The entire basis of an invented writing foundation is a more open and broader model of what constitutes acceptable or "good writing."

The notion of invented writing has been borrowed deliberately from the notion of invented spelling, not only to highlight the relationship between writing development and learning to spell phonetically, but to demonstrate that teaching methods and strategies must be coordinate to the natural patterns of literacy development as much as possible, facilitating and building upon these patterns. But "invented writing" is not completely isomorphic with the framework of invented spelling. We can borrow the notion that invented writing intimately involves an extended and elaborative form of symbolic "pretend" or "make-believe" play activity that centrally involves the problems of ego-reality and ego-development at the core of a person's adaptive behavior and functioning. This of course must be seen in context to a print-based society in which knowledge and information is commonly stored and transmitted in the form of legible print.

Writing as a literacy skill demands its own set of methods and approaches to instruction, and is not to be seen as the logical consequence of the development of the skill of reading or other knowledge or cognitive skill. Like reading and mathematics, it is a central and fundamental skill that underlies advanced literacy and expert knowledge specialization in all domains of knowledge, and therefore its teaching and development shouldn't be considered as only incidental or along-side of the teaching of other content areas.

The development of written fluency and proficiency is coordinate with the development of other skills and abilities and knowledge structures in children, and is consonant within a Piagetian framework of equilibration and the attainment of cognitive mastery over perceptual realities. Centrally, we may say that writing skills depend upon the achievement of an independent sense of equilibriation that is based upon the principles of symbolic conservation and transference of meaning. It is for this reason especially that writing performance is delayed until cognitive-intellectual maturation can be achieved that allows the child to use language in a fully symbolic and self-contained manner. Evidence in spontaneous written elicitations demonstrates the same pattern-recognition/recall structures operating in symbolic framing as in other kinds of activities, in particular with drawing and pattern recognition tasks. Writing comes to unfold upon multiple levels of morphological, phrasal, sentential and inter-sentential structure of extended linguistic expression, and these four levels of structure replicate to some extent the hypothetical stages of writing development.

In general, I recommend that writing development may progress through a series of basic mechanical-operational steps that are involved in symbolic word-recognition and word production patterns, moving from context-bound to context independent modalities. These general steps focus upon the structure of phraseological development of a child's written English and reflect to some extent the development of logical structures of the child's thinking. Hypothetically, the three steps in order of their developmental emergence are segmentation, chunking/compounding and schematization, and these steps correspond to my model of symbolic development (emblematic recognition, categorical classification, and propositional symbolic) and to Piaget's three operational steps (preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational). As students pass through these various steps and stages of writing development, interactive acquisition comes to focus upon certain discrete aspects-elements of word and sentence structure, and this corresponds to Vygotsky's notion of emergent zones of proximal development. I would further analytically subdivide each of these phases into early, intermediate and advanced levels.

Emphasis upon the phraseological and clausal structure of English is important because it is perhaps the most neglected aspect of language structuration and acquisition and yet it remains the basis for linguistic productivity and construction. By phraseological structure I mean the elaboration of phrase structures and clauses within a sentential context. These phrase structures are the fundamental oral strings of speech, and in accordance with theories of short-term memory vary in word/syllable length to between 3 and 7 words in a sequentially/syntactically ordered string that forms a sub-sentential unit, with an average of about 5 (English pentameter or decasyllabic construction) and upper and lower limits between 1 and about 9 or 10. If we counted the average number of words per string of children's early writing, and the typical string construction and phraseological arrangement and ordering, we would probably see a gradual and ordered pattern of development of such constructions from simple to increasingly complex, differentiated and articulated with an increase in average word/syllable length. Not only would the number of words increase, but the number of syllables per word would increase as well as the net number of syllables per phrase string. These phraseological strings are used to organize inferential or symbolic meaning (i.e. relationships) and to chunk experience into manageable units.

Writing and literacy development entails the supraphraseological, sentential and inter-sentential development of such strings in an organized and coherent manner, as well as the progressive paradigmatic subordination and sequential syntagmatic coordination of strings within larger schematized frameworks that are manipulated symbolically. Conventions of grammatical marking and stylistic considerations generally follow this process of sentential-phraseological string construction. This is clearly evident in English, and probably holds equally well for any language that has a written script as a medium of expression.

We may distinguish between in English phraseological structure between simple and elaborative and conjunctive/subjunctive/compound phrases. We have nominative phrases, verb phrases, adverbial and adjectival clauses, prepositional phrases and auxiliary phrases, any of which may be easily expanded or contracted from a single word to an unpacked, comma delimited list of words. It is in the elaboration of these phraseological structures that we find fluency and mastery of English.

The first step of segmentation occurs in the early phases of learning to read, write and spell, and involves the breaking down of the phonic and morpho-phonemic structure of the language. At this stage there is a preoccupation with the word-to-sound and word-to-meaning pattern and phraseological structure follows natural oral speech of simple declarative sentences lacking any but very simple phraseological structure.

The second intermediate stage of chunking and compounding involves growing skills in word-recognition and word-pattern mastery, and the increasing use of compound and elaborative phrasal structures that are focused primarily upon a sentential level. At this stage, it can be expected that students deploy a limited but growing range of stereotypical phraseological constructions in an increasingly flexible manner. Phrases may be perceived as whole units, and can stand in place of word-symbols within sentential strings.

The third and most advanced stage involves the mastery of the English morpho-phonemic system and the capacity to elaborate and juxtapose phraseological structures and segments within larger inter-sentential schemata. Schemata may be articulated at multiple levels that can be arranged in various forms of order and at this stage I believe words take on a multi-symbolic plasticity of alternate meanings that can be manipulated with increasing skill.

Hypothetically, and in an analytical-synthetic manner, I suggest that we might see the stages in natural writing development in the following way:

Holophrastic Word drawing stage: This is the first step in writing that is coordinate to the pre-phonetic stage of a young child's first attempts and word and letter writing. Words and their associations are direct and seen as bound to the context of their presentation. There is therefore little or no transference of the word-symbol, as a cognitive construct, from one context to another.

Multi-phrastic word-operation stage: The challenges of unmastered mechanics of simple writing, spelling and basic vocabulary dominate this stage, that bears witness to the development of prototypical phrasal strings that are mostly concrete and self-centered in reference and operation: i.e., "I say hi." The ball is green. Et. Children do not have a well developed sense of sequence or space in relation to their story-line.

Phrasal Compounding stage: Children become more adapt at recognition and expression of the simple phrasal structure of English and are moving into more elaborated phrasal patterns that involve such markings and nuances of meaning as tense, mode, aspect. Typical of this stage is the stringing together of multiple strings by the logical connective "and" that is used to convey sequence and make explicit relation. The one sentence paragraph may be typical of this stage.

Factive-formulaic Sentential stage: The child has developed a basic mastery of both the simple and elaborative phrasal structure of the language, has gained experience in many of its structural transformations (active/passive; ergative/nominative; declarative/interrogative; topical/commentary) and stylistic alternations, and is focused upon the challenges of mastery of the informal and formal rules of style and grammar of writing. The formal expository essay is the archetypical manner and form of writing that is represented at this stage of writing. It can be said that most people do not develop far beyond this stage in their writing development.

Figurative-Metaphoric Symbolic Stage: At this stage, the student has developed a basic mastery of English, and is involved in the increasing mastery and command over the formal stylistics of the writing process that permits the child to experiment and explore with the figurative and hidden side of language, and to transcend a factive level with increasing use of the word-symbol as a metaphorical device that permits the elaboration and extension of meaning in an implicit and non-literal manner. The student can with facility express in written form the subtler shades of meaning that one wishes to express and has command over the basic mechanics and structure of written English. Phrasal structure at this stage undulates in a concertina manner and can be easily expanded or contracted, and meaning becomes hierarchized at multiple levels of signification/implication that may cooccur simultaneously within a text. It is at this advanced stage that an authentic sense of the author's own voice is accomplished, and writing becomes an almost reflexive activity like speaking if it is not inhibited. It is at this stage also that writing breaks through a conventional sense of world order to stand apart from the world and to adopt a "para"-conventional point of view (or multiple points of view, as the case may be) from beyond the implicit constraints of the system in which it is embedded.

I believe this development of writing skill depends centrally upon the cultivation of certain specialized and hierarchically organized working memory structures that are contextually articulated as well as retention-recall facilitation of longer-term memory structures. Writing is a deeply "interiorized" process resting upon a subconscious sea of symbolism and meaning that is the stuff of dreams and fantasy. Words called up in the writing process, and their symbol associations, come from a deeper and largely unconscious background of the mind. These processes may be substituted by certain fantasy-symbolic projective patterns rooted in the human imagination. Writing requires a sophisticated form of thinking and implicit understanding upon a number of levels, and to a great extent represents an expression of thought processes that become concretized (symbolically reified) and organized in terms of word strings and linguistic expressions.

Writing is an extended linguistic process of symbolic construction, or projective symbolization, in extended chainworks of meaning that combine prototypical "thing" with prototypical "action" or relation connectives. Mythology is seen as a preliterate oral equivalent of written expression, and incorporates the most prototypical form of symbolic chaining activity as elucidated by Claude Levi-Strauss in his structural dialectics. The quaternary and extended structure of analogical reasoning and symbolic chaining is evident in thematic development of story lines, and these story lines usually have a social and social-psychological reference base that is situated in the larger life-world and community of the child.

While it is evident that writing will be an arduous achievement in many learning disabled individuals, it remains true as well that writing may provide for some people with special needs an alternative form of expression for their intelligence than might otherwise find no or little other framework for expression. As a form of symbolic framing methodology, writing can provide for many individuals who may be otherwise psychologically frustrated an avenue of symbolic expression and fantasized displacement that they may be otherwise lacking. This may be used in a therapeutic, diagnostic and rehabilitative/remediative context to good effect. It is clear therefore that devices which may facilitate written expression, such as a dictophone, or tape-recorder, a word processor or a key-board, would serve as structural supports in the writing development process for those who have some relative degree of learning disability.

There is the possibility in this theoretical model that classic learning disability, namely in the form of dyslexia/dysgraphia, may involve a series of stages that may be related to the following paradigm. We can in other words expect that certain attention-retention deficit disorders appear at certain levels and in certain stages of development that may be coordinate with the previous stadial schema of acquisitional development of literacy. I would suggest the possibility at the early segmentational and holophrastic-multiphrastic stages that basic auditory and visual deficit and integration disorders are most apparent and at work. At the intermediate stages that correspond with the transitional-phrasal and chunking-compounding phases, it is expected that the syndromes of classical "word blindness" or conventional or special dyslexia-dysgraphia appear, and are characterized by letter reversals, inversions, etc. At the advanced stages, I would suggest what occurs are secondary symptoms that relate to fixity and field-dependency of response pattern, and may be characterized by attentional-retentional inertia of inflexible forms that were acquired at a previous stage and that subsequently interfere with derivative acquisiton. It should be emphasized that all children may show signs of these symptoms at the appropriate age. The question is whether and how fast children are able to work their way through these developmental difficulties and move on to more advanced stages of cognitive-behavioral integration.

As a consequence of these heuristic considerations I offer a general model or paradigm of primary literacy development in English:

It is evident that there must be some accounting for differentials in the timing and rate of development by different children. It is clear that children with basic learning disabilities with an early onset will have much greater delay and a widening disparity compared to the normal or modal trajectory, such that the nomothetic distribution of skills and acquisitional abilities of children at the end of their elementary school period will be much greater than at the beginning. It is evident as well that these areas may be more or less coordinate, but not in any mutually interdependent manner--children may gain early fluency in reading but remain at a concrete and categorical level of thinking and symbolic response patterning. Furthermore, the categories should be considered not only as tentative theory driven constructs, but as largely flexible and non-exclusive sets that overlap significantly.

Though I focus primarily on the primary levels of the foundations of literacy in English, there are residual questions as to the transferability of this kind of model to other languages, of the possibility of "ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny" in the historical and cultural development of the language, and in whether or how much secondary acquisition may approximate or recapitulate the same kind of developmental model of primary literacy acquisition. Furthermore, it must be emphasized that acquisition of literacy skills in reading or writing does not end with the end of the elementary school trajectory or with coming of age. Advanced literacy skills should be considered an on-going process of gradual development that moves along a continuum of progressive refinement in which the zones of proximal development move towards increasingly specialized, elaborated, differentiated and peripheral areas of mastery. I would approximate the learning curve to the natural s-shaped growth curve that is robust and recurs throughout nature. Early age infant development corresponds to a prolonged latency period. Elementary age development corresponds to a period of exponential increase. Secondary age development corresponds to a stable trajectory of cumulative development that continues through maturity into a late stage of decline.

In the following set of suggestions, I distinguish between what I call the early development of pre-writing foundations and the early reinforcement of communicative and story-building awareness and skills, and what I would refer to as the derivative and advanced development of writing, research and post-writing and self-editing skills that follows upon the achievement of basic written proficiency and fluency. This distinction is equivalent to the BICS/CALP model of language acquisition. This roughly corresponds to a movement along a continuum between development of primary literacy skills towards increasing emphasis upon secondary and advanced literacy skills.

Though the emphasis in writing has been in direct written forms of expression even at an early elementary school level, it is my contention that at least until the stage of formal operational development, the child is typically not "there" in terms of writing proficiency and fluency. This stage may be achieved cognitively at a much earlier and in an advanced manner by some kids, but its achievement occurs as a process of elaborative play and constructive activity that may involve many other interests, skills and patterns of response than those found formally or directly within the process of writing itself. As a caveat of this assertion, it can be said that children through such activity are constructing for themselves a latent platform of integrative and constructive skills upon a basic level that may be "turned" back on in later years and serve them well the rest of their lives. If the fruits and potential benefits of these activities are "delayed" until reawakened in later adult life, this by no means obviates or negates the constructive value of such activities. Postponement and reactivation of early experiential based knowledge, associations and skills may serve in ego-development and defense, and may be a key to overcoming neurotic repressions that may subsequently interfere with development.

The formal emphasis upon direct acquisition of basic and advanced academic writing skills and knowledge within a structured framework has tended to deemphasize and ignore the important role that anti-structure plays in the symbolic organization and integration of human experience. I believe it is especially in these areas that we can find the development of the symbolic-cognitive and experiential foundations of writing.

It may well prove to be the case that not only are children being systematically deprived of the anti-structural contexts for the kind and quality of constructive or elaborative play activity that may underlie writing development, but they may find that what play activity they do typically engage in within a modern electronic context is to a great extend prefabricated, canned, passive-reactive instead of constructive in orientation. Thus the children may be getting a "double whammy" from the system, with the central message of the medium being the externalization and external manipulation of deeply interiorized symbolisms and significations.

Before proceeding, I wish to suggest that underlying all good writing are three essential elements: 1. Strong authorial voice that includes concrete expression of meaning and relationship; 2. Communicative coherence; 3. Holistic integration (synergism) of the elements of the written piece such that the whole piece is somehow more than its component parts. These three elements combine in many different ways to make each individual's writing style unique. Therefore the complex developmental trajectory to achievement of writing style of each individual is also unlike that of any other individual's pathway of development. I believe that these three aspects or elements of effective writing can be cultivated and nurtured even in prewriting activities that do not directly involve the skills of written literacy. Furthermore, I believe that good writing develops from a consistent focus on word-symbol recognition, selection and manipulation skills, and what can be called advanced vocabulary acquisition skills. Students who are interested and good in writing from an early age appear to demonstrate clearly an interest in the meaning and application of appropriate terminology and words, and actively seek to expand this meaning through the learning of new words and the modulation or conditioning of words already known. This interest continues and endures with good writers throughout their life. In this case, the morpheme is the minimal constituent entity of any language that carries meaning, and is thus the essential symbolic building block of meaning and value in any language. The word as a graphic symbol takes on central value in written form, and in print-based societies.

Pre-Writing Foundations and Early Story-Building Activities

I group the activities of this stage into three general categories that include:

1. Story Modeling and Word Play Activities: Story modeling provides children the imaginary framework upon which to build. Mime and clown activities are the prototypical forms of this kind of play-modeling activity. Nonverbal and expressive language (modulation of voice, emphasis, etc.) constitute the basis for story-modeling. In this form of activity, for instance, kids may not only make masks (and costumes) but use the masks they make to play the parts of the imaginary character they have developed through mask making. Children at this age do not clearly distinguish reality from make-believe, and have an eidectic experience of reality and pre-symbolic pattern of response of the phenomenal field that may be taken advantage of in the development of pre-writing foundations.

Nursery Rhyme and Song activities

Children's Stories & Fairy Tales

Hilights Activities: Find the Object Picture Book Activities: Cross-Word Puzzles; Embedded Words; Mazes; Scavenger or Word hunts; Easter-egg word hunts.

Hide and Seek activities

Word Play Books: Dr. Seuss; Children's poetry and non-sense literature.

Word Games & Word Manipulatives

Skit and Child drama

Cartoons and Animation

Poster construction-presentation activities

2. Constructive & Elaborative Play Activities that emphasize the extended role of make believe and allegorical play activities in children.

Play-doh Activities: Clay dolls and moulding/modeling sets

String, Can & Construction Paper Activities

Sand-box Activities

Special Activity Centers/rooms/areas

Imaginative Building blocks, Leggos and Erector Sets

Modeling Activity: Dioramas; model constructions

Elaborative Toy sets: Toy solider sets; Farm Animal Sets; Cars; Town sets

3. Peripheral Skill Development-Transference Activities emphasizing the positive gain and isomorphism of structure between different kinds of skill based activities and activity based skills such as drawing, speaking, reading, writing, acting, working, experiencing and feeling.

Speaking to Writing Activities--How would you write what you say?; What does he say? What does he mean?

Drawing to Writing Activities--Cartoons/Word Bubbles/Film strips; Drawing Tasks; Poster making-presenting; labeling, describing, defining.

Reading to Writing Activities--Journals;

Acting to Writing Activities--Charades; Skits; Scripts; Scenarios

Experiencing to Writing Activities--How does it make you feel?; When you see the color red, what does it make you think of (feel)?

The development of advanced writing literacy skills should not have to await the achievement of other kinds of learning, and can proceed alongside of these other aspects of development as long as it is done in moderation and in respect to the delayed onset of the integration these skills in advanced writing. It is not necessarily good to expect of a first or second grader a polished paragraph that is grammatically perfect in every sense. It is enough to expect that the child will achieve a basic sense of satisfaction and accomplishment through gaining expression and communication in writing that is acknowledged and appreciated by others. Improvement of the mechanics of writing will follow upon the desire to continue writing and to write well for one's own and other's sake.

The advanced literacy techniques I suggest below are based upon my own experiences in writing and editing as an adult, and in teaching reading and writing to other adults. They can be modified to fit a more basic framework for the upper Elementary levels and intermediate secondary levels.

1. Formal Writing, Research, Editing and Criticizing Activities. Formal writing skills can be introduced and taught piecemeal and in conjunction with a range of other activities and knowledge areas

Extensification/Intensification Strategies: Gradually expanding reading/writing platform to encompass both a wider range of kinds/types of styles and more intensive depth.

Self-Editing strategies/Reciprocal/Peer editing strategies

The write/read/edit/rewrite cycle

Building formal research/reference skills

Elaboration and Experimentation of varied forms of writing and written forms of expression: Students should be exposed to as many different forms of good writing as possible, in as many different genres, and can be encouraged to experiment and explore with different styles and formats in writing.

Experiential Writing: Daily/weekly walkabouts; Film reviews; Grand discussions;

Guest presentations/lectures; hobbies & interests.

Pragmatic Writing: Recipes; Maps; Instructions, directions;

Mastering and Modulating Voice in Written Communication: Assume alternative points of view (first, third, singular/plural, etc.)

Letter Writing activities

Illustrations & Design

2. The Scaffolded, Spiraled, Integrated Writing Framework. I suggest a thematically integrated course in writing and literature appreciation that extends through the elementary grades and builds upon itself and upon the function of writing in all content/subject areas that are taught.

Pre-Writing Grand Tour Activities: Early, "magic bus" type tours; Engaging in vicarious explorations of reality.

Literary Circles & Celebrations of Literature; biographies of authors;

Sentence-word string & symbol frames; Structured activities/manipulatives that focus on specific skill/knowledge areas relating to grammar, rules of usage and style, as well as the elicitation of symbolic/thematic content.

Student-Scripted Role Playing Activities

Muti-Thematic and Cross-Content Writing & Pre-writing activities

Periodical & class-book Publications: Newspapers, Magazines, Year-books; book-making activities

3. Electronic Literacy Development. Electronic literacy perhaps comes to its clearest focus in terms of word-processing and text-editing using computers, and these aspects of computing can be exploited in teaching writing and editing skills with computers. It is my contention that electronic literacy does not necessarily or intrinsically take away from the development of conventional print-based literacy skills, but may add to and enhance these basic skills if used in the appropriate manner. I suggest the use of computers in the following areas of writing development:

Building & maintaining a class website with individual web-pages

Newsletters with graphics

Graphics (scanned, drawn) with scripts

E-mail pen-pals

On-line chats in-class and in-school.

Word processing skills

I offer a tentative theory-driven set of methods as well as a potential research paradigm in the guise of "invented writing." I make a set of claims from a heuristic point of view without claiming any empirical basis for these in educational research beyond observation and my own previous research and development in related areas. Refinement of the paradigm presented herein depends critically upon careful research/observational design and empirical substantiation and revision of the basic model and its details. It is my central contention that we can measure "writing literacy" in our society like we can measure "geographical literacy" (which may indirectly be related) and that this measure is not merely in terms of the number and quality of books an individual may read in the course of a year, but in terms of the kinds of successful writing activities that an individual effectively employs in the course of many other activities. To gain inner pleasure from the writing experience should in the best of possible worlds serve as the only necessary and sufficient incentive to induce people to write. Pleasure rather than frustration should be the most common experience of writing, though it rarely is.