series of capital ‘Hs’ which link with his schemas at that time (height, grids and tra-
jectoriesand verticalandhorizontal lines) and is like the ‘fence’ he’d used in the letter
he’d written to his mother. The letter also included a face and several approxima-
tions of letters, and the word ‘Hello’ (see Figure 4.1).
Alex was in his first term at school. His ‘voice’ shines through his text. Although
he had not then met his pen pal, he was able to communicate some features of his
own school that were significant to him. To support his containingand enveloping
schema that week I had put ‘pitta’ bread and some salad to fill it in the fridge, for
those children who were interested. Alex’s reference to ‘pocket money’ bread is his
personal way of naming the bread – the action of filling the bread reminded him of
putting his pocket money intoa purse. At home he enjoyed making ‘houses’ out of
boxes which he then filledwith snails from the garden. The content of his letter
therefore reflects part of his schema interest (containing andenveloping) at that time,
whilst the form of the letters he used to represent meaning was also influenced by
schemas (height, vertical movement, trajectoriesand grids) in the grid-like letters and
use of vertical and oblique lines he wrote.
We believe that the content that children explore through their early marks and
the meanings they make are of the utmost importance. At the same time the func-
tion and form of children’s early mark-making can be seen to develop in tandem
with the content if their schema interests are viewed as relating to their early
writing. We can see how both Alex’s schemas and his emerging skills support the
development of his writing.
Ferreiro and Teberosky have argued that from 3 years of age children test out their
hypotheses about both print and the process of writing in systematic ways (Ferreiro
and Teberosky, 1982). In her challenging study of schemas, Athey identified a clear
relationship between children’s schemas and their early mark-making and writing
that the example of Alex’s letter demonstrates. Alex’s understanding of the social
and cultural purposes of writing is also continually developing through observation
and co-construction within his home and early childhood setting.Marks and approximations
At an early stage Mitchell, 4:9, used tiny spirals to represent letters, also experi-
menting with continuous wavy lines and his own approximations of numerals and
letters. To these he gradually added standard letters, increasing his repertoire. He
used the first letter of his name to stand for many words and then, having made the
link with the sound of this initial letter, widened the range of initial letters of words,
often matching the sound. Mitchell began to put dots between letters, explaining ‘so
the letters don’t get bumped’ and at this time also used spaces for the same reason.
During this period of observations Mitchell was fascinated by counting everything
he could and often labelled things he counted with numbers on small pieces of
paper. He was interested in series of numbers and experimented (for example, 20, 60,
90 and 1, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 30, 8) before counting for the first time in a standard
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