Writing in an Integrated Curriculum: Prekindergarten English Language Learners as Symbol Makers

We describe a collaborative study done by a prekindergarten teacher, staff developer, and college teacher educator. Data were collected over an academic year by means of field notes, audiotapes, and videotapes. The teacher's portfolio was also a data source. In an urban public school classroom where most of the 16 children were initially speakers of a Chinese language, the teacher and children enacted a highly integrated curriculum whose core was multiple symbol systems, woven together from the moment children entered the room. Although literacy was an area of focus, the beginnings of writing and reading were consistently embedded in meaningful social and cultural contexts. Establishing connections between adult and child and child and child mattered as much as connections between words and print. Within the context of "high-stakes" schooling, the teacher managed to balance child choice with curricular needs.