Learning to read and write constitutes a central part of becoming literate. From an emergent literacy perspective, learning to write starts during the first years of a child's life, fostered by experiences that permit and promote meaningful interaction with oral and written language. Data from a research study that took place in 11 pre-primary education classes in the region of Achaia, Greece, is reported. The early children's attempts to write are in the center of this paper. Written samples by 172 pupils (aged 47-71 months), who were in the pre-alphabetic spelling phase, the period preceding the phonographic or conventional spelling, are analyzed. During this phase, even though the children have not yet discovered the letter sound correspondence, they demonstrate a great amount of knowledge of what is written language, how it works and what are its purposes. The results of the study suggest that reading and writing development is a strictly interrelated process and pre-school education reinforces literacy by creating context of decontextualized language use. The educational implications of the findings are also discussed. The main argument is that kindergarten education could significantly help the development of early literacy, but it is important to adopt an approach that starts from what children know and gives them opportunities to communicate by writing.KEY WORDS: emergent writing and reading, kindergarten education, prealphabetic phase of writing L1 -Educational Studies in Language and Literature 4: 129-150, 2004.

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The purpose of this research is to investigate the perceptions of kindergarten teachers and first-grade primary school teachers about their cooperation regarding literacy practices and their enhancement. The need for cooperation, the potential for co-operation, how to achieve it, as well as its benefits for enhancing literacy, are the key questions explored. The research is part of a broader study of the relationships between natural / early and conventional / school literacy, the teachers' perceptions of the possibility of integration of language curricula, as well as practices resulting from the study of curricula. The data were collected through a questionnaire sample of 632 teachers who were separated into two groups, 326 kindergarten teachers and 306 teachers teaching the year of the process in the first grade of Greek elementary schools. The results showed that kindergarten teachers were more positive about the need for co-operation on literacy practices, but first-grade primary school teachers believed more in their co-operation. Kindergarten teachers and first-grade primary school teachers agree on the need for joint actions, with teachers considering as significant constraints the co-location of school units, the lack of common time, and the pressure of "course material". Theoretical backgroundWhen attempting a theoretical and research approach to enhancing natural literacy and its teaching, one must first and foremost analyze the behavior of teachers in an attempt to visualize how they shape their teaching choices. According to Kalantzis et al. (2019), if we are to have 'new', 'modern' students we need nothing less than 'new', 'modern' teachers to work with students, with parents and with each other by expanding and promoting 'literacy' learning practices towards learning "literacies" to create learners capable of deriving, producing meaning and communicating.

This work describes a survey conducted in Syros Island in Greece. The intention was to ascertain kindergarten teachers' perceptions about early literacy and the skills and knowledge they consider as important for pre‐school aged children. The participants were all the kindergarten teachers of the island (N = 19) and the data were collected during a workshop where three groups tried to make a conceptual map of ‘literacy’. The results show that, overall, kindergarten teachers adopt a very broad definition of literacy as communication ability but restrict their practices to phonics instruction. Because this attitude differs significantly from the provisions of the official curriculum, which is based on emergent literacy perspective, it is obvious that due to the lack of specialised education and support the participants prefer a hidden curriculum, which is based on the assumption that mere acquaintance with graphophonemic relations is enough for the initial level of education. The findings of this research show that teachers lack awareness of recent research and pedagogy concerning early literacy development and demonstrate the urgent need for development of specialised educational programmes for in‐service kindergarten teachers.

The purpose of this article is to investigate two interconnected facets of literacy development and more specifically the interplay between reading and writing development. Given the rather poor literacy practices in Greek pre-primary education, our intervention during ''reading-writing workshops'' (engagement of children in meaningful literacy activities as socially situated written texts) showed that changes towards literate practices occurred in both age groups (4-5 and 5-6 years old) under investigation. Significant differences in literate performances have also been found between second year pupils who had attended first year class and those who had not.We discuss the contribution of pre-primary education to the development of literacy, as well as some educational implications concerning the Greek pre-primary school.KEY WORDS: emergent literacy, greek importance of schooling to early literacy development, pre-primary education, reading/writing interplay L1 -Educational Studies in Language and Literature (2005) 5: 3-21 Ó Springer 2005