From the very first chapter of this informative and inspiring book, a clear picture emerges of how even three- and four-year-olds' capacities for serious authorship can and should be supported. - Lillian G. Katz Coauthor of Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years By the time they reach preschool or kindergarten, young children are already writers. They don't have much experience, but they're filled with stories to tell and ideas to express - they want to show the world what they know and see. All they need is a nurturing teacher like you to recognize the writer at work within them. All you need to help them is Already Ready. Taking an exciting, new approach to working with our youngest students, Already Ready shows you how, by respecting children as writers, engaged in bookmaking, you can gently nudge them toward a lifetime of joyful writing. Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover guide you through fundamental concepts of early writing. Providing numerous, helpful examples of early writing - complete with transcriptions - they demonstrate how to:

• make sense of children's writing and interpret how they represent sounds, ideas, and images
• see important developmental signs in writers that you can use to help them grow further
• recognize the thinking young children engage in and discover that it's the same thinking more experienced writers use to craft purposeful, thoughtful pieces.

Then Ray and Glover show you how little ones can develop powerful understandings about:

• texts and their characteristics
• the writing process
• what it means to be a writer.

You'll learn how to support your writers' quest to make meaning, as they grow their abilities and refine their thinking about writing through teaching strategies such as:

• reading aloud
• working side by side with writers
• sharing children's writing.

Writing is just one part of a busy early childhood classroom, but even in little doses, a nurturing approach can work wonders and help children connect the natural writer inside them to a life of expressing themselves on paper. Find that approach, share it with your students, and you'll discover that you don't have to get students ready to write - they're Already Ready.